Talk:Eihwaz

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[edit] ē2

The vowel usually transcribed *ē₂ in reconstructions of Proto-Germanic isn't the vowel that came from PIE *ei and later merged with *ī. *ē₂ doesn't have a clear-cut PIE ancestor, but in PGmc it's found in the 3rd principal part (preterite plural) of strong verbs of the 4th and 5th conjugation class (see Germanic strong verb), in the 2nd and 3rd principal parts (preterite singular and plural) of 7th conjugation verbs after reduplication is lost, and in a few other cases like the word for here. I have no idea if that vowel is ever written with eihwaz. —Angr/talk 19:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

How would this generally have been pronounced? I've not been able to figure this out, and I'm not sure if it would be appropriate in, say, the name "Neil", as even though it is the correct letter, I'm not sure if it has the correct sound. Klomag (talk) 03:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

We don't really know -- it seems to be actually redundant in the runic writing systems where it occurs, and most of what is presented in the article was extrapolated and reconstructed from the occurrence of the word "Eoh" in Old English. AnonMoos (talk) 11:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

the only thing we can be sure of is that pronunciation changed over time. In Old English, the pronunciation was /e:o/. In Proto-Norse or late Proto-Germanic, the value may have been /æ:/ or similar. The important thing is not the precise phonetical value (which will have varied dialectally anyway), but the phonological value, which was "the long vowel formerly known as /ei/". --dab (𒁳) 16:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)