Some of the earliest proposals may stick out a bit because the style hadn't been quite nailed down. On the other hand, it's good to have a bit of variation in design for readability.
The <*hand/uz> rune was actually based on <*hald/anan> rather than the other way around, and the latter was first drawn with only straight lines. Design-wise, these runes actually stick out a bit because they have arcs that are not divisible by 90°. So below are rune closer to <z> along with other derived runes. I think the updated <*hand/uz> rune fit better into in with the other runes, but I'm not quite sure what to do with <*hald/anan>.
I'm not actually too fond of the <*jain/az> rune either but I think the way I drew it is a bit off. The idea is that it represents an arrow being shot and landing on a far away place. I think arrow-symbols for pointing in a direction is a bit of an anachronism. According to Wikipedia, arrows as a symbol for pointing developed in the 18th century. But my thinking is that this isn't just an arrow symbol, it's really supposed to be an arrow flying through the sky. I tried some new variants, which are somewhat closer to clawgrip's variant.
I also thought that the <*gast/iz> rune really stood out form the other in a text. I like the basic pictographic nature of it, though. Below are two slightly modified version.
The unassigned <!person> rune is based on a transitional form of the <m>-rune found in the early younger Fuþark:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannaz
I think the closest to a gender and age-neutral word for person in Early Germanic is in fact the word *mannaz/*mannô, which is also the root of the adjective *manniskaz (> MG
Mensch, MSw
människa, both nouns meaning ‘human being’) but I think it may have had the specific sense of ‘adult male’ already in the earliest languages, alongside the more general sense of ‘human’.
The <!person>-rune is also found in <*dew/anan> which is supposed to be an upside down person pierced by an arrow.
Prinsessa wrote:Also a random personal suggestion for a rune that came to my mind just now (
done quick and dirty so you can clean it up if you like it; I used the <t> sound rune and duplicated the top part — perhaps one side should be rounded in line with the north/south ones but I guess it'd have to be the top, which would be a bit weird):
<*arhw/ō>
Perhaps a combined character could be made for the Scandinavian word 'pil' by combining the character for the tree, whatever that will be, and this character.
Good idea! Makes sense for "pil", I think.
I would draw the lines straight. I tend to use curved upwards pointing branches and straight downward pointing (althought there are multiple exceptions). There's not much of a reason for this except I think I've noticed a tendency towards this distribution in runic inscriptions (may be imagined).
clawgrip wrote:I also propose the following new runes:
*hundaz/hound, *fuglaz/fowl, *trewą/tree, *tungǭ/tongue
They look nice!
clawgrip wrote:(including an updated version of the water rune):
Looks much better!
clawgrip wrote:Also, just so we know, the rune for "stone" is extremely transparently based on Chinese (cf. [...]; the archaic forms of this character are even more similar). I know some people were complaining about Chinese origins, and that one kind of sticks out to me.
I guess it's fine to borrow ideas from archaic Chinese for how to represent certain concepts, but this one does stick out a bit to me as well, because the Chinese character seems very idiosyncratic in it's attempt to represent a stone. According to Wiktionary originated as:
"Pictogram ([...]): a stone beneath a cliff ([...]). The cliff was subsequently distorted into [...]. Alternatively, a cave set into the side of a cliff or mountain."
The design itself actually works pretty good for a rune, I think, but perhaps it should be assigned to something else.
Stone seems like a very significant concept for a culture that wrote a lot in stone. On real life rune stones, it's quite possible that
stæinn (specifically the accusative singular
stæin) is the most common word as they typically just tell you who raised a particular stone after whom. So perhaps the <stain/az> rune should depict a raised runestone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runestone
I think i did borrow the idea for guest from of a chinese character which according to Wiktionary was originally an
"Ideogrammic compound ([...]): [...] (“roof”) + [...] (“individual”) – a individual ([...]) under a roof ([...]) – a guest. Oracle bone script used [...] instead of [...]." The <gast/iz> rune does look a bit like early versions of the chinese character, if only for the fact that it's something that's under a roof. Although it's a person in a house who is offered a table or something similar.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AE%A2
I had to edit out all Chinese characters because trying to post them yielded a MySQL error. I've been told the forum doesn't handle all of Unicode.