Clear frame Click here

 

An Orthography of Nornish

The Norn language for the language once spoken in Scotland during the age of use of "classical" Ogham in stone seems to have flowered in the 5th–6th centuries around the Irish Sea. In Scotland, a number of inscriptions using the Ogham writing system are known, but their language, unknown during the transition to Old Irish, the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century.

In Ireland and in Wales, the language of the inscriptions this period is termed Primitive Irish. Another possiblility would be 4th century Irish colonies in Wales who came into contact with the Latin alphabet and the Ogham alphabet was modelled on another script, and some even consider it a mere cipher of its template script. Runic origin would elegantly explain the presence of "H" and "Z" letters unused in Irish, as well as the presence of vocalic and consonantal variants "U" vs. "W" unknown to Latin or Greek writing. The Latin alphabet is the main contender mainly because its influence at the required period (4th century) is most easily established, viz., via Britannia, while the runes in the 4th century were not very widespread even in continental Europe. The most likely candidates for the origins of runic scripts are the 5th to 1st century BC Northern Italic alphabets, Lepontic, Rhaetic and Venetic, all closely related to each other and themselves descended from the Old Italic alphabet. These scripts bear a remarkable resemblance to the Futhark in many regards.The runes were introduced to, or invented by, the Germanic peoples in the 1st or 2nd century.Posts that contain Norn per day for the last 30 days.


Medieval Norn is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish and Danish. Norn is generally considered to have been fairly similar to Faroese, sharing many phonological and grammatical traits with this language.

According to the 11th c. Lebor Gabála Érenn, the 14th c. Auraicept na n-Éces, and other Medieval Irish folklore, Ogham was first invented soon after the fall of the Tower of Babel, along with the Gaelic language, by the legendary Scythian king, Fenius Farsa. According to the Auraicept, Fenius journeyed from Scythia together with Goídel mac Ethéoir, Íar mac Nema and a retinue of 72 scholars. They came to the plain of Shinar to study the confused languages at Nimrod's tower (the Tower of Babel). The first message written in Ogam were seven b's on a birch. Monumental Ogham inscriptions are found in Ireland, Wales, and the Isle of Man, with a few additional specimens found in England, Scotland and Shetland.

The Gaels during the beginning of the Christian era (at which time Gaelic people were mostly restricted to Ireland) believed themselves to be descendants of Míl Espáine coming from the north of Iberia, mainly Gallaecia (modern Galicia and northern Portugal), where there existed also an early form of Ogham script.

 

 

ß = lowercase sharps, German ð= lowercase eth, Icelandic	Norn shared many traits with the dialects of south-west Norway. This includes a voicing of /b, d, g/ to /p, t, k/ before or between vowels and a reduction of /ß/ and /ð/ ("thing" and "that" respectively) to /t/ and /d/.

---