Old Hungarian Alphabet

Old Hungarian Alphabet

The Old Hungarian script is an alphabetic writing system used by the Hungarians before the 10th century. In modern Hungarian, the script is known formally as székely írás 'Szekler script',; it is also known as rovásírás, or székely rovásírás, székely-magyar írás; for short also simply rovás "notch, score") Because it is superficially reminiscent of the Germanic runic alphabet, the Old Hungarian script has also been described as "runic" or "runiform". The English name in ISO 15924 is Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic).

The script is thought to derive from or share a common ancestor with the Old Turkic script, and was probably in use by the 9th century. The Hungarians settled the Pannonian plain in 895. When the Kingdom of Hungary was established in AD 1000 and Christianity was adopted, the Latin alphabet was adopted and the script fell into disuse. In remote regions of Transylvania, however, the script remained in marginal use by the Székely Magyars at least into the 17th century, giving it the name székely rovásírás.

The alphabet does not contain the letters for the phonemes dz, dzs of modern Hungarian, since these are relative recent developments in the language's history. Nor does it have letters for Latin q, w, x and y.