Fuþorc Rune 31: Überlegungen zu Form und Funktion

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The Old English runic inventory, known as the fuþorc, added several new runes to the inherited Common Germanic fuþark, the last of which is commonly called Rune 31 ®, documented exclusively on the Ruthwell Cross. This rune poses a number of questions: Apart from its name being unknown, its raison d’être, the origin of its form and its function, i.  e. its sound value, are far from clear as well. On the basis of a careful phonological analysis, the first part of the article proposes a sound value [kwj], i.  e. a (possibly phonemicized) labiovelar k-sound in a palatal environment, which would explain the need for a new grapheme. Another factor in the creation of Rune 31 may have been language contact, as the Ruthwell Cross stands in a region bordering Celtic settlement areas, i.  e. an area in which Irish was spoken at the time. In the second part of the article, linguistic features of Irish which may have enabled a bilingual speaker to notice a still subphonematic difference in the form of Old English recorded on the Ruthwell Cross are briefly discussed. This suggestion is corroborated by writing samples of a trilingual child also indicating multilingual awareness of more than one phonological system.