The Old Hungarian script, or Hungarian runes (, 'székely-magyar runiform', or ), 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. The Old Hungarian script is a child system of the Old Turkic script.
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 it its Hungarian name, . 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).Code request for the Rovas script in ISO 15924 (2012-10-20)
Name In modern Hungarian, the script is known formally as ('Szekler script'). The writing system is generally known as , , and (or simply 'notch, score').by the public. From the verb 'to carve', 'to score' since the letters were usually carved on wood or sticks.
History Origins
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.Franz Altheim: Geschichte der Hunnen, vol. 1, p. 118 Linguist András Róna-Tas derives Old Hungarian from the Old Turkic script,Róna-Tas (1987, 1988) itself recorded in inscriptions dating from .
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'.Új Magyar Lexikon (New Hungarian Encyclopaedia) – Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1962. (Volume 5)
The modern Hungarian term for this script (coined in the 19th century), , derives from the verb ('to score') which is derived from old Uralic, general Hungarian terminology describing the technique of writing ( 'to write', 'letter', 'knife, also: for carving letters') derive from Turkic,András Róna-Tas A magyar írásbeliség török eredetéhez (In: Klára Sándor (ed.) Rovás és Rovásírás p.9–14 — Szeged, 1992, ) which further supports transmission via Turkic alphabets.
Medieval Hungary
Epigraphic evidence for the use of the Old Hungarian script in medieval Hungary dates to the 10th century, for example, from Homokmégy.István Fodor – György Diószegi – László Legeza: Őseink nyomában. (On the scent of our ancestors) – Magyar Könyvklub-Helikon Kiadó, Budapest, 1996. (Page 82) 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,Dóra Tóth-Károly Bera: Honfoglalás és őstörténet. Aquila, Budapest, 1996. where he stated that the Székelys may use the script of the Blaks.Bodor, György: A blakok. In: Viktor Szombathy and Gyula László (eds.), Magyarrá lett keleti népek. Budapest, 1988, pp. 56–60.
Johannes Thuróczy wrote in his 1488 Chronica Hungarorum that the Székelys did not forget the Scythian letters and these are engraved on sticks by carving.Johannes Thuróczy: Chronica Hungarorum http://thuroczykronika.atw.hu/pdf/Thuroczy.pdf
Early Modern period
The Old Hungarian script became part of folk art in several areas during this period. In Royal Hungary, Old Hungarian script was used less, although there are relics from this territory as well.
There is another copysimilar to the Nikolsburg Alphabetof 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, including examples from Kibéd, Csejd, Makfalva, Szolokma, Marosvásárhely, Csíkrákos, Mezőkeresztes, Nagybánya, Torda, Felsőszemeréd, Kecskemét and Kiskunhalas.
Scholarly discussion Hungarian scriptDiringer, 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. . pp. 143. Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. . pp. 366-368 was first described in late Humanist/Baroque scholarship by János Telegdy in his primer . 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 ('runic writing') began to re-enter the popular consciousness in Hungary, and script historians in other countries began to use the terms "Old Hungarian", , 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, (Runes and runic writing, Budapest, 1909) and (The authentic relics of Hungarian runic writing, Budapest, 1915) contain valuable information on the topic.
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. 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) 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.
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. 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.
Popular revival
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.Maxwell, Alexander (2004). "Contemporary Hungarian Rune-Writing: Ideological Linguistic Nationalism within a Homogenous Nation", Anthropos, 99: 2004, pp. 161-175
Old Hungarian has seen other usages in the modern period, sometimes in association with or referencing Hungarian neopaganism, 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.
Epigraphy
The inscription corpus includes: A labeled crest etched into stone from Pécs, late 13th century (Label: aBA SZeNTjeI vaGYUNK aKI eSZTeR ANna erZSéBeT; We are the saints [nuns] of Aba; who are Esther, Anna and Elizabeth.) Rod calendar, around 1300, copied by Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli in 1690.Klára Sándor: A bolognai rovásemlék, Szeged, 1991; It contains several feasts and names, thus it is one of the most extensive runic records. Nicholsburg alphabet Runic record in Istanbul, 1515. Székelyderzs: a brick with runic inscription, found in the Unitarian church Énlaka runic inscription, discovered by Balázs Orbán in 1864 Székelydálya: runic inscription, found in the Calvinist church The inscription from Felsőszemeréd (Horné Semerovce), Slovakia (15th century)
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 (like the abjads used by the Semitic languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, 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 Á á B eb C ec Cs ecs D ed (Dz) dzé Ligature of and (Dzs) dzsé Ligature of and E e É é F ef G eg Gy egy H eh I i Í í J ej K ek K ak L el Ly elly, el-ipszilon M em N en Ny eny O o Ó ó Ö ö Ő ő P ep (Q) eq () Ligature of and R er S es Sz esz T et Ty ety U u Ú ú Ü ü Ű ű V ev (W) dupla vé Ligature of and (X) iksz () Ligature of and (Y) ipszilon Ligature of and Z ez Zs ezs
The Old Hungarian runes also include some non-alphabetical runes which are not ligatures but separate signs. These are identified in some sources as "" (likely a misspelling of ). Further research is needed to define their origin and traditional usage. Some common examples are: TPRUS: ENT: TPRU: NAP: EMP: UNK: US: AMB:
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