Hungarian Runes / Rovás

Origin

Hungarian runes or rovás (Székely Rovásírás) are are thought to have descended from the Turkic script (Kök Turki) used in Central Asia, though some scholars believe the Hungarian Rovás pre-date the Turkic script. They were used by the Székler Magyars in Hungary until the 11th century. In remote parts of Transylvania however, the runes were still used up until the 1850s. During the 20th century there was a revival of interest in the alphabet.

Notable features

Type of writing system: alphabet.
Usually written on sticks in boustrophedon style (alternating direction right to left then left to right), although the right to left direction was most common.
The runes include separate letters for all the phonemes of Hungarian and are in this respect better suited to written Hungarian than the Latin alphabet.
Words were separated by three vertical dots.
Ligatures were often used and sometimes an entire word was written with a single sign.
There are no lower or upper case letters, but the first letter of a proper name was often written a bit larger.
Vowels were sometimes not written, unless their omission would cause ambiguity.
The consonants with (a) next to them were used before a, á, o, ó, u and ú, while those with (e) next to them were used before e, ë, é, i, í, ö, ő, ü, ű
A number of separate symbols, known as capita dictionum or the head of the words, were also used, though their usage is uncertain.

Used to write

Hungarian (Magyar), a Uralic language with about 15 million speakers in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Slovakia. There are also many people of Hungarian origin in the UK and other European countries, the USA, Canada and Australia.

Hungarian Runes

Old Hungarian runic alphabet

Numerals

Old Hungarian numerals

Sample texts

Sample text in Hungarian Runes

Translation into Modern Hungarian

(Ezt) az Úr születése utáni 1501. évben írták. Mátyás, János, István kovácsok csinálták. Mátyás mester (és) Gergely mester csinálták [uninterpretable].

English translation

(This) was written in the 1501st year of our Lord. The smiths Matthias, John (and) Stephen did (this). Master Matthias (and) Master Gergely did [uninterpretable]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hungarian_script

Logo and name of the Feher Taltos Traditional Hungarian Drummers (Regélő Fehér Táltos)

Translation

Feher Taltos Traditional Hungarian Drummers (Regélő Fehér Táltos)

Links

Reading the Runes - The Hungarian Quarterly (in English)
http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no157/080.html

Information about Hungarian Runes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hungarian_script
http://www.solyommadar.hu
http://www.pararadio.hu/010326_196/rovas.html

Hungarian Rune fonts
http://geocities.com/rovasiras/betuk/

Hungarian Runic Textprocessor (Freeware)
http://www.dsuper.net/~elehoczk/frmain.htm

Other alphabets

Armenian, Avestan, Bassa (Vah), Beitha Kukju, Coptic, Cyrillic, Elbsan, Etruscan, Fraser, Georgian (Asomtavruli & Nuskha-khucuri), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hungarian Runes, Irish, Kayah Li, Korean, Latin, Lycian, Lydian, Manchu, Meroïtic, Mongolian, N'Ko, Ogham, Old Church Slavonic, Oirat Clear Script, Old Italic, Old Permic, Orkhon, Pollard Miao, Runic, Santali, Somali, Sutton SignWriting, Tai Dam, Thaana, Uyghur

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