Blog

Hungarian Runes

Rovás (Hungarian Runes)

Hungarian Runes / Székely-Hungarian Rovás

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

Information about Hungarian Runes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hungarian_script
http://www.solyommadar.hu
http://www.pararadio.hu/010326_196/rovas.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=TyK8azCqC34C&pg=PA177&hl=hu&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

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

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

  • Post category:Languages
  • Reading time:4 mins read