Tag Archives: ᚳ

Rune Casting: Cen

Things can get pretty dark sometimes. I get it. The gloom comes in and anything shining or warm, the bright things, go dim. All the luster to anything recedes.  Be at ease, there’s a fire inside and the light will come back. It always does. Turn around and look. Don’t you see? All these shadows are made by light at rest upon your body.

 

ᚳ

Originally the letter C made a hard sound in Old English, like a K, but because everything is temporary, over time C developed a second sound depending upon its immediate neighbors: CH (represented as tʃ by the International Phonetic Alphabet). One’s immediate neighbors can really change a vibe. In Old English C most often sounds like a K, velar region of the mouth. It moves to the front of the mouth (dental and front palate region) to make the CH sound mostly when it lives next door to a long I or long E, or a diphthong starting with these letters.

Cen is usually pronounced as cheen, or /t͡ʃeːn/ in IPA, but may also be pronounced as keen, K sound. We don’t really know what Old English sounds like. The E in Cen is a long E, so this would suggest a CH sound, except if this were a Y, and E was … More