Consonants

1. Consonants With W – The letter W appears after H, KH, GH, K, G, or NG. Note: In the actual runes, HW instead of WH, KW instead of QU, GW instead of GU.
2. Consonants With H – The letter H appears after other letters to create a softer, fricative sound, just like in English or Irish or Latin. Thus: PH, TH, KH, BH, DH, GH.
3. CH as KH – When CH is a K, KH, or hard H sound, it is written as K + H in the runes.
4. CH as TCH or SH – When CH is a TCH or SH sound, it is written as C in the runes.
5. CH (hard) to SH (soft) and J (hard) to ZH (soft) – Add H after rune C or J to create SH or ZH.
6. RH and HR are pronounced /hr/ as in “Hrothgar,” with a strong H sound before the R. Both may appear in the runes.
7. X is a ligature for KS or GZ in the runes.
8. Q is written as K in the runes.

Vowels

Vowel Modifiers

1. Vowel Modifiers – { vm1, vm2, vm3 } Separate signs are used after the vowels in the runes as modifiers of vowel quality. Each modifier is placed to the right of the vowel in numerical order.
2. vm1 = Vowel Length ~ –vm1 = Short; +vm1 = Long; In the English/Latin letters, this is shown with a circumflex accent: (â, ê, î, ô, û);
3. vm2 = Vowel Change ~ –vm2 = Unmodified; +vm2 = Modified; These show a vowel with umlaut (ä/æ, ö/œ, ü/y); or a schwa or reduced vowel (ë); an (ï) is possible but unchanged;
4. vm3 = Syllable Stress ~ –vm3 = Unstressed; +vm3 = Stressed;
5. Vowel Tonal Pitch ~ These are written using a system to be determined.

Short Vowels

1. I = /ih/ as in “bit”.
2. E = /eh/ as in “bet”.
3. AE = /ae/ as in “bat”.
4. A = /uh/ as in “but”.
5. O = /aw/ as in “bought” or “law”.
6. U = /oo/ as in “cook” or “put”.
7. Ë = /uh/ as in “cut” or (schwa) as in the final vowel of “sofa.”

Long Vowels

1. Î = /ee/ as in “beet” or “machine”.
2. Ê = /ay/ as in “bait” or “café”.
3. ÂÊ = /ae-ee/ as in “catbird seat” or almost as in “tie”.
4. Â = /ah/ as in “father”.
5. Ô = /oh/ as in “toe”.
6. Û = /ooh/ as in “boo”.
7. Ë = /uh/ as in “cut” or (schwa) as in the final vowel of “sofa.”

Numbers

1. The words for the numbers use a decimal (base ten) system.
2. The runes are derived from an ancient tally system that counted in groups of five and ten.
3. However, it is only used when keeping an informal tally or score, before writing it down in numbers.
4. The tally system does not use the “minus one” method of Roman numerals.

Symbols

1. The runes use a (begin, end) pair for quotes. There are no double (“a”) versus single (‘s’) quotes.
2. The runes use a single symbol for the apostrophe, which is not used for quotes. It has been copied to the apostrophe or single quotes marks in English/Latin writing for ease of use.
3. The hyphen, dash, and minus sign are distinct, separate signs in the runes. They are not interchangeable.
4. The punctuation marks and mathematical symbols have somewhat different usage rules.