Western Script

From: Julian Lord <julian.lord_at_hol.fr>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 03:13:20 +0200


Joerg Baumgartner :

> I personally lean more
> to the alphabetic script of the Arabs or Hebrews. A couple of similar,
> but different deities have certain consonant combinations in common, but
> not (all) the vowels.
>
> My favourite example:
>
> (Y/H)LM(L) for sun deities. Insert various vowels for:
> Yelm
> Yelmalio
> Elmal
> Halamalao
> Ehilm
>
> This reminds me strongly of YHV
> Yahve
> Yehova
>
> Anyway, IMO one reason why the GLs managed to equate the various sun
> deities with each other so easily was that they were written almost
> exactly the same, minus a few wiggles or dots for vowels.

This is very tempting argumentation, Joerg:I personally am in agreement with the alphabet
theory.

But it should be pointed out that vowel changes are not in themselves proof of alphabetic
writing systems. Indeed, they also occur among peoples who have no writing.

Furthermore, your examples use the latin alphabet, and not a Gloranthan one, but this is
mere nit-picking, of course ...
Basically, you have proved that the Name of the Sun God is pronounced differently among
various peoples of Glorantha. Several reasonable hypotheses could be put forward to
explain these various names which would have nothing to do with alphabetical writing
systems. Words written with ideograms, for instance, are still pronounced using phonemes,
subject to ordinary phonetic evolution. (Whoops, sorry about the pedantic yadda.)

Your reminder that the various sun-gods mentioned (but not Somash?) only have one name
(in various forms) is of course very interesting, demonstrating that normal linguistic
variation occurs in Glorantha.

Now, I think that you're right, and that the GL word for "Sun" was something like :

/O. Jovanovic Rune Font mode on/

    *(Hy).E.La.Ma.(L)
/O. Jovanovic Rune Font mode off/

But this only tells us how it might have been *pronounced*, unfortunately.

I do remain in favour of a western alphabet, anyway. (Including a vowel-letter for the E in the Yelm-word ... )


End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #298


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