Old Hungarian script

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Template:Short description Template:For Template:Infobox Writing system Template:Contains special characters

The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes (Template:Langx, 'székely-magyar runiform', or Template:Lang) is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet. The term "old" refers to the historical priority of the script compared with the Latin-based one.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Old Hungarian script is a child system of the Old Turkic alphabet.Template:Cn

The Hungarians settled the Carpathian Basin in 895. After the establishment of the Christian Hungarian kingdom, the old writing system was partly forced out of use during the rule of King Stephen, and the Latin alphabet was adopted. However, among some professions (e.g. shepherds who used a "rovás-stick" to officially track the number of animals) and in Transylvania, the script has remained in use by the Székely Magyars, giving its Hungarian name Template:Lang. The writing could also be found in churches, such as that in the commune of Atid.

Its English name in the ISO 15924 standard is Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Code request for the Rovas script in ISO 15924 (2012-10-20)Template:Dead link</ref>

Name

In modern Hungarian, the script is known formally as Template:Lang ('Szekler script').<ref name="ReferenceA">Template:Audio</ref> The writing system is generally known as Template:Lang, Template:Lang,<ref name="ReferenceA" /> and Template:Lang (or simply Template:Lang 'notch, score').<ref>by the public. From the verb Template:Lang 'to carve', 'to score' since the letters were usually carved on wood or sticks.</ref>

History

Origins

File:Campagna-bronz-fokostarto.jpg
Axe socket found near Campagna.

The precise date or origin of the script is unknown.

Origins of the Turkic scripts are uncertain. According to some opinions, ancient Turkic runes descend from primaeval Turkic graphic logograms.<ref>Franz Altheim: Geschichte der Hunnen, vol. 1, p. 118</ref> Linguist András Róna-Tas derives Old Hungarian from the Old Turkic script,<ref>Róna-Tas (1987, 1988)</ref> itself recorded in inscriptions dating from Template:Circa.

Speakers of Proto-Hungarian would have come into contact with Turkic peoples during the 7th or 8th century, in the context of the Turkic expansion, as is also evidenced by numerous Turkic loanwords in Proto-Hungarian.

All the letters but one for sounds which were shared by Turkic and Ancient Hungarian can be related to their Old Turkic counterparts. Most of the missing characters were derived by script internal extensions, rather than borrowings, but a small number of characters seem to derive from Greek, such as eF 'eF'.<ref name="greek_origin">Új Magyar Lexikon (New Hungarian Encyclopaedia) – Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1962. (Volume 5) Template:ISBN</ref>

The modern Hungarian term for this script (coined in the 19th century), Template:Lang, derives from the verb Template:Lang ('to score') which is derived from old Uralic, general Hungarian terminology describing the technique of writing (Template:Lang 'to write', Template:Lang 'letter', Template:Lang 'knife, also: for carving letters') derive from Turkic,<ref name="turkic_ling_evidence">András Róna-Tas A magyar írásbeliség török eredetéhez (In: Klára Sándor (ed.) Rovás és Rovásírás p.9–14 — Szeged, 1992, Template:ISBN)</ref> which further supports transmission via Turkic alphabets.

Medieval Hungary

File:Rovasmap 9th century.jpg
The area of Rovas script usage in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Template:Over-quotation Epigraphic evidence for the use of the Old Hungarian script in medieval Hungary dates to the 10th century, for example, from Homokmégy.<ref name="homokmegy">István Fodor – György Diószegi – László Legeza: Őseink nyomában. (On the scent of our ancestors) – Magyar Könyvklub-Helikon Kiadó, Budapest, 1996. Template:ISBN (Page 82)</ref> The latter inscription was found on a fragment of a quiver made of bone. Although there have been several attempts to interpret it, the meaning of it is still unclear.

In 1000, with the coronation of Stephen I of Hungary, Hungary, previously an alliance of mostly nomadic tribes, became a kingdom. The Latin alphabet was adopted as official script; however, Old Hungarian continued to be used in the vernacular.

The runic script was first mentioned in the 13th century Chronicle of Simon of Kéza,<ref name="SimonKeza">Dóra Tóth-Károly Bera: Honfoglalás és őstörténet. Aquila, Budapest, 1996. Template:ISBN</ref> where he stated that the Székelys may use the script of the Blaks.<ref>Bodor, György: A blakok. In: Viktor Szombathy and Gyula László (eds.), Magyarrá lett keleti népek. Budapest, 1988, pp. 56–60.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Ervin">Template:Citation</ref> Johannes Thuróczy wrote in the Chronica Hungarorum that the Székelys did not forget the Scythian letters and these are engraved on sticks by carving.<ref name="thuroczykronika.atw.hu">Johannes Thuróczy: Chronica Hungarorum http://thuroczykronika.atw.hu/pdf/Thuroczy.pdf</ref>

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Early Modern period

File:Nikolsburg.gif
The alphabet of Nikolsburg, 1483.

The Old Hungarian script became part of folk art in several areas during this period.Template:Citation needed In Royal Hungary, Old Hungarian script was used less, although there are relics from this territory as well.

There is another copy – similar to the Nikolsburg Alphabet – of the Old Hungarian alphabet, dated 1609. The inscription from Énlaka, dated 1668, is an example of the folk art use.

There are a number of inscriptions ranging from the 17th to the early 19th centuries,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> including examples from Kibéd, Csejd, Makfalva, Szolokma, Marosvásárhely, Csíkrákos, Mezőkeresztes, Nagybánya, Torda, Felsőszemeréd,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Kecskemét and Kiskunhalas.

Scholarly discussion

Hungarian script<ref>Diringer, David. 1947. The Alphabet. A Key to the History of Mankind. London: Hutchinson's Scientific and technical Publications, pp. 314-315. Gelb, I. J. 1952. A study of writing: The foundations of grammatology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 142, 144. Gaur, Albertine. 1992. A History of Writing. London: British Library. Template:ISBN. pp. 143. Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Template:ISBN. pp. 366-368</ref> was first described in late Humanist/Baroque scholarship by János Telegdy in his primer Template:Lang. Published in 1598, Telegdi's primer presents his understanding of the script and contains Hungarian texts written with runes, such as the Lord's Prayer.

In the 19th century, scholars began to research the rules and the other features of the Old Hungarian script. From this time, the name Template:Lang ('runic writing') began to re-enter the popular consciousness in Hungary, and script historians in other countries began to use the terms "Old Hungarian", Template:Lang, and so on. Because the Old Hungarian script had been replaced by Latin, linguistic researchers in the 20th century had to reconstruct the alphabet from historic sources. Gyula Sebestyén, an ethnographer and folklorist, and Gyula (Julius) Németh, a philologist, linguist, and Turkologist, did the lion's share of this work. Sebestyén's publications, Template:Lang (Runes and runic writing, Budapest, 1909) and Template:Lang (The authentic relics of Hungarian runic writing, Budapest, 1915) contain valuable information on the topic.Template:According to whom

File:2013.09.09 Balaton (3).JPG
Welcome sign in Latin and in Old Hungarian script for the town of Vonyarcvashegy, Hungary.

Beginning with Adorján Magyar in 1915, the script has been promulgated as a means for writing modern Hungarian. These groups approached the question of representation of the vowels of modern Hungarian in different ways. Adorján Magyar made use of characters to distinguish a/á and e/é but did not distinguish the other vowels by length. A school led by Sándor Forrai from 1974 onward did, however, distinguish i/í, o/ó, ö/ő, u/ú, and ü/ű. The revival has become part of a significant ideological nationalist subculture present not only in Hungary (largely centered in Budapest), but also amongst the Hungarian diaspora, particularly in the United States and Canada.<ref name="Max">Maxwell, Alexander (2004). "Contemporary Hungarian Rune-Writing: Ideological Linguistic Nationalism within a Homogenous Nation", Anthropos, 99: 2004, pp. 161-175</ref>

Old Hungarian has seen other usages in the modern period, sometimes in association with or referencing Hungarian neopaganism,Template:Citation needed similar to the way in which Norse neopagans have taken up the Germanic runes, and Celtic neopagans have taken up the ogham script for various purposes.

Controversies

Template:Criticism section Not all scholars agree with the Old Hungarian theory. The linguist and sociolinguist Klára Sándor said in an interview that most of the romantic statements about the script appear to be false.Template:Cn According to her analysis, the origin of the writing is probably runiform (and with high probability its origins are in the western Turkic runiform writings)Template:Citation needed and it is not a different writing system and contrary to the sentiment the writing is neither Hungarian nor Székely-Hungarian; it is a Székely writing since there are no authentic findings outside the historic Székely lands (mainly today's Transylvania); the only writing found around 1000 AD had a different writing system. While it may have been sporadically used in Hungary its usage was not widespread. The revived writing (in the 1990s) was artificially expanded with (various) new letters which were unneeded in the past since the writing was cleanly phonetic, or the long vowels which were not present back in the time. The shape of many letters were substantially changed from the original.

She stated that no works since 1915 have reached the expected quality of the state of the linguistic sciences, and many were influenced by various agendas.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The use of the script often has a political undertone as it is often used along with irredentist or nationalist propaganda, and they can be found from time to time in graffiti with a variety of content.<ref name="Max"/> Since most of the people cannot read the script it has led to various controversies, for example when the activists of the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party (opposition) exchanged the rovas sign of the city Érd to szia 'Hi!', which stayed unnoticed for a month.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Epigraphy

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File:Marsigli script.gif
Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli's work (1690), The copied script derives from 1450.

The inscription corpus includes:

Characters

The runic alphabet included 42 letters. As in the Old Turkic script, some consonants had two forms, one to be used with back vowels (a, á, o, ó, u, ú) and another for front vowels (e, é, i, í, ö, ő, ü, ű). The names of the consonants are always pronounced with a vowel. In the old alphabet, the consonant-vowel order is reversed, unlike today's pronunciation (ep rather than pé). This is because the oldest inscriptions lacked vowels and were rarely written down, similar to other ancient languages' consonant-writing systems (Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.). The alphabet did not contain letters for the phonemes dz and dzs of modern Hungarian, since these are relatively recent developments in the language's history. Nor did it have letters corresponding to the Latin q, w, x and y. The modern revitalization movement has created symbols for these; in Unicode encoding, they are represented as ligatures.

For more information about the transliteration's pronunciation, see Hungarian alphabet.

Letter Name Phoneme (IPA) Old Hungarian (image) Old Hungarian (Unicode)
A a Template:IPA File:A (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Á á Template:IPA File:Á (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
B eb Template:IPA File:B (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
C ec Template:IPA File:C (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
Cs ecs Template:IPA File:CS (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
D ed Template:IPA File:D (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
(Dz) dzé Template:IPA File:Dz (rovásbetű) JB.svg Ligature of Template:Script and Template:Script
(Dzs) dzsé Template:IPA File:DZS (rovásbetű) JB.svg Ligature of Template:Script and Template:Script
E e Template:IPA File:E (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
É é Template:IPA File:É (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
F ef Template:IPA File:F (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
G eg Template:IPA File:G (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Gy egy Template:IPA File:Gy (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
H eh Template:IPA File:H (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
I i Template:IPA File:I (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Í í Template:IPA File:Í (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
J ej Template:IPA File:J (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
K ek Template:IPA File:K (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
K ak Template:IPA File:K-ak-(rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
L el Template:IPA File:L (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ly elly, el-ipszilon Template:IPA File:LY (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
M em Template:IPA File:M (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
N en Template:IPA File:N (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ny eny Template:IPA File:Ny (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
O o Template:IPA File:O (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ó ó Template:IPA File:Ó (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ö ö Template:IPA File:Ö (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ő ő Template:IPA File:Ő (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
P ep Template:IPA File:P (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
(Q) eq (Template:IPA) File:Q (rovásbetű).svg Ligature of Template:Script and Template:Script
R er Template:IPA File:R (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
S es Template:IPA File:S (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
Sz esz Template:IPA File:Sz (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
T et Template:IPA File:T (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ty ety Template:IPA File:Ty (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
U u Template:IPA File:U (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
Ú ú Template:IPA File:Ú (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
Ü ü Template:IPA File:Ü (rovásbetű) JB.svg File:Ü-zárt (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Ű ű Template:IPA File:Ű (rovásbetű).svg File:Ű-nyílt (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
V ev Template:IPA File:V (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script
(W) dupla vé Template:IPA File:W (rovásbetű).svg Ligature of Template:Script and Template:Script
(X) iksz (Template:IPA) File:X (rovásbetű) JB.svg Ligature of Template:Script and Template:Script
(Y) ipszilon Template:IPA File:Y (rovásbetű) JB.svg Ligature of Template:Script and Template:Script
Z ez Template:IPA File:Z (rovásbetű) JB.svg Template:Script
Zs ezs Template:IPA File:Zs (rovásbetű).svg Template:Script

The Old Hungarian runes also include some non-alphabetical runes which are not ligatures but separate signs. These are identified in some sources as "Template:Lang" (likely a misspelling of Template:Lang<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>). Further research is needed to define their origin and traditional usage. Some common examples are:

Features

Old Hungarian letters were usually written from right to left on sticks.Template:Citation needed Later, in Transylvania, they appeared on several media. Writings on walls also were right to leftTemplate:Citation needed and not boustrophedon style (alternating direction right to left and then left to right).

File:1-1000 Rovásszámok.svg
Hungarian numerals

The numbers are almost the same as the Roman, Etruscan, and Chuvash numerals. Numbers of livestock were carved on tally sticks and the sticks were then cut in two lengthwise to avoid later disputes.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 50 100 500 1000
File:ROVAS NUMERAL 1.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 2.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 3.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 4.svg File:5 (rovásbetű).svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 6 RTL.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 7 RTL.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 8 RTL.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 9 RTL.svg File:ROVAS NUMERAL 10.svg File:50 (rovásbetű).svg File:100 (rovásbetű).svg File:Rovas 500.svg File:1000 (rovásbetű).svg
Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script Template:Script
  • Ligatures are common. (Note: the Hungarian runic script employed a number of ligatures. In some cases, an entire word was written with a single sign similar to a bind rune.) The Unicode standard supports ligatures explicitly by using the zero width joiner between the two characters.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • There are no lower or upper case letters, but the first letter of a proper name was often written a bit larger. Though the Unicode standard has upper and lowercase letters, which are the same in shape, the difference is only their size.
  • The writing system did not always mark vowels (similar to many Asian writing systems). The rules for vowel inclusion were as follows:
    • If there are two vowels side by side, both have to be written, unless the second could be readily determined.
    • The vowels have to be written if their omission created ambiguity. (Example: Template:Lang – Template:Script can be interpreted as Template:Lang – Template:Script (wheel) and Template:Lang – Template:Script (rounded), thus the writer had to include the vowels to differentiate the intended words.)
    • The vowel at the end of the word must be written.
  • Sometimes, especially when writing consonant clusters, a consonant was omitted. This is a phonologic process, with the script reflecting the exact surface realization.

Text example

Template:Unreferenced section

Text From Csikszentmárton, 1501
Text From Csikszentmárton, 1501

Text from Csíkszentmárton, 1501. Runes originally written as ligatures are underlined.

Unicode transcription: Template:Script

Interpretation in old Hungarian: "ÚRNaK SZÜLeTéSéTÜL FOGVÁN ÍRNaK eZeRÖTSZÁZeGY eSZTeNDŐBE MÁTYáS JÁNOS eSTYTáN KOVÁCS CSINÁLTáK MÁTYáSMeSTeR GeRGeLYMeSTeRCSINÁLTÁK G IJ A aS I LY LY LT A" (The letters actually written in the runic text are written with uppercase in the transcription.)

Interpretation in modern Hungarian: "(Ezt) az Úr születése utáni 1501. évben írták. Mátyás, János, István kovácsok csinálták. Mátyás mester (és) Gergely mester csinálták gijas ily ly lta"

English translation: "(This) was written in the 1501st year of our Lord. The smiths Matthias, John (and) Stephen did (this). Master Matthias (and) Master Gregory did (uninterpretable)

Unicode

Template:Main After many proposals<ref>Old Hungarian/Szekely-Hungarian Rovas Ad Hoc Committee: Old Hungarian/Sekely-Hungarian Rovas Ad hoc Report Template:Webarchive, 2012-11-12

The Unicode block for Old Hungarian is U+10C80–U+10CFF:

Template:Unicode chart Old Hungarian

Pre-Unicode encodings

A set of closely related 8-bit code pages exist, devised in the 1990s by Gabor Hosszú. These were mapped to Latin-1 or Latin-2 character set fonts. After installing one of them and applying their formatting to the document – because of the lack of capital letters – runic characters could be entered in the following way: those letters which are unique letters in today's Hungarian orthography are virtually lowercase ones, and can be written by simply pressing the specific key; and since the modern digraphs equal to separate rovás letters, they were encoded as 'uppercase' letters, i.e. in the space originally restricted for capitals. Thus, typing a lowercase g will produce the rovás character for the sound marked with Latin script g, but entering an uppercase G will amount to a rovás sign equivalent to a digraph gy in Latin-based Hungarian orthography.

See also

Notes

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References

English

Hungarian

Latin

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Template:Hungary articles Template:List of writing systems

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