𐳉

e

a sound, not a word

The vowel that almost never got written

Glyphs are shown in Unicode and laid out left to right. Both scripts are written right to left, so these rows are a convenience rather than a facsimile.

Sound
e /ɛ/
Position
3
Group
Vowels
Unicode
U+10CC9

Implied by every consonant name

Historical Rovás left e out more consistently than any other vowel, and there is a specific reason.

The letters are recited with a leading e: eb, ec, ed, ef, eg — not bé, cé, dé. The vowel is already inside the name of every consonant. A carver writing the consonant had, in a sense, already written the vowel, and both e and é were dropped almost universally as a result.

That convention is why this letter is comparatively rare in historical inscriptions despite representing one of the commonest sounds in the language.

When it was written anyway

The general rule for vowels was: write one if it ends a word, if two vowels fall together, or if leaving it out would make the word ambiguous. Otherwise leave it out and let the reader supply it.

Modern Rovás abandons all of this. The revival writes every vowel, because its purpose is one-to-one transliteration of Latin-alphabet Hungarian rather than efficient carving.

Frequently asked questions

Because every consonant's name already contained it. Letters were recited eb, ec, ed rather than bé, cé, dé, so writing a consonant implied the vowel. Both e and é were dropped almost universally.

When one ended a word, when two fell together, or when omitting one would make the word ambiguous. Otherwise carvers left them out and readers supplied them.

No. The revival writes every vowel, because its aim is one-to-one transliteration of Latin-alphabet Hungarian rather than economical carving.

No. Rovás letters are purely phonetic. Their names — eb, ec, ed and so on — are recitation aids, the consonant with a leading vowel, not words. There is no rune poem, no kenning tradition and no ideographic layer, which puts the script in a weaker position for divination than the Germanic runes.

Rovás

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