Historical usage of "W" or "VV"

[CanadianWanderer]

The Oera Linda Book uses the "W." It seems to be the case that the usage of "W" or "VV" was a much more recent innovation used by languages based on the Latin script. Therefore, delegitimizing the book's authenticity. I would be interested to hear a rebuttal against this.

[ott]

OL has VV for W, which is not seperately listed on the letter page.
I don't see how this would delegitimize the book's authenticity.

[CanadianWanderer]

Yes, it uses "VV," not "W." Other languages have used that as well. However the usage of "VV" is a way more recent usage of the letters.

[Wil Helm]

For me it seems that in OLB the letter "W" is written not as a double. As a single.
Same like "M" but then upside down. Actually it is the opposite mouth-lip formation as the "M"-sound.
M tighten the lips no air out, W relaxes it to let if low. But that is more my look at how alfabet letters could have been drawn, as a very symbol of fysical pronounciation of the sound in lips and throat.

If i'm right, Frethorik (303 BC) added the Jule script examples? I wonder why he didn't add the "W"-letter as opposite as the "M"-letter. It is plain clear in the text itself, no duplication of V needed as the M is also not represented as duplication of OLB's ^ (A). I think he was not complete in his interpretation/presentation of the used alfabet we can all see that was used.

Wherever i look to oldest Lowlands (Dutch, Flemish, Fries, ...) understandable texts available, w was always present.
So why would that delegitimize the authenticity of a "presumably" older unknown version? Not sure.
It is the shady Latin way of firstly using the half of the letter W (because they hadn't a V-sound, so not needed for that) for the W-sound and than turning the W-sound in a V-sound. Ultimately their offshoots having to use combo's as ou or the W-letter as double V or U again for a sound always been present in their language ... that makes me wonder more about accurateness of this unfolding, timings and links to Enlgish, French, German with their usage of double V or double U.

De Baljuw
Uwers zijnseerlijk

[ott]

the usage of "VV" is a way more recent usage of the letters.

We can't know that, since most texts have been lost.

[Kraftr]

I've seen arguments that Latin was not the notation of a spoken language or dialect but a constructed 'correct' language derived from scolarly endeavor of defining the rules of Roman language. Fryas as a germanic language is written as spoken(similar to greek and hebrew, although they too could have been (partially) constructed). which supports the assumption the writing and ethymology are it's product, as is part of the thesis that OLM is more ancient.
The v as a vowel is spoken as 'u'(like in tu in french) or 'oe' (like 'oo'in room(english)depending on surrounding letters. Placing two of these together automatically creates a w sound, maybe originally with a double sound (oe-v) It fits with the contraction of t-h and n-g as well, something that was done in Futhark too.
I personally believe the v as prefix actually has a 'meaning', as pre-/suffixes do in Gothic(and Latin), like the funny placement of periods in OLM, or Umlaut in German. So in other words one v would not suffice. This shows a very organic, logical devellopment of words -and letters. The clarity of pronounciation and these rules/inner logic make the germanic languages remarkably steady across time.

Medieaval versions of written down German and Dutch are much more contrived and on the forum we discussed how mishearing and expressing with Latin pronouncion in mind may have contributed to French becoming more Celtic/Latin while a lot of it also came from Germanic. Latin itself was largely southernized Gothic/Germanic, a shift that can be seen in southern german dialects already, slurring fricative sounds -again pointing to the north as an underappreciated early lingual/cultural influence on Italy, The point of doubling v was lost in the speech of Romans, being downstream from this need/logic in northern language.

So the w sound, as well as writing it as double v makes sense from the language itself, and is not likely a Latin invention. Logically, this assumption is candidate for an (effect of) erasure of history, and not strong as an argument.

[Nordic]

Old Saxon Baptismal Vow is a text that culturally and linguistically connects to the Frisian region. It's dated to c. AD 700s to 800s and used double-U for W.

Thunaer ende uuoden ende Saxnote ende allum them unholdum, the hira genotas sint.
Thunaer and Woden and Seaxnot and all those devils who are their followers.

See image:

uuoden.jpg (95.46 KiB) Viewed 2934 times

This usage is because the likely foreign-born, foreign-speaking, foreign-writing and foreign-educated Catholic scribe based his writing system on Latin Roman script that cannot differentiate between U, V and single-letter W, thus this goofy double-U for VV or W. The scribe may have been racially a Germanic-born person, but as seen above he recorded the Germanic culture from a foreign culture's viewpoint. An argument can be made that the original Germanic spelling in above case was with VV or W, e.g. as in Woden or Wodin (Oera Linda book, cf. Óðinn in Iceland ↔ Oden in Baltic Sea). Foreign spellings of Wralda are in modern times variously written with V or W e.g. Freyr as veralldar gud or Lappish Waralden Olmai.

In Germanic rune script it's assumed that the scribes occasionally substituted single consonants for spoken double consonants. Hence many spelling reconstruction assuming double consonants, perhaps taking clue from nearby Finnish in which language the double consonants are very common.

Kraftr's mention of odd placement of periods in OL language is attested also from the Old Italic language that also seemingly randomly uses the period-dots in a way foreign to modern readers (Canadian-Estonian author Andres Pääbö has written much on this). Heck, we even see that in above Baptismal Vow example where in the first shown ende word the .en and de were written hugely separate, yet the two following cases are shown as an continuous ende.

Please see also UUoden-Woden and Geuuis-Giwis here (thanks for the tip to an anonymous). When the authors of Beowulf wanted to spell 'Väinämöinen' ie. Magus (MS 187v, BL 190v at here), they used the Wynn and Yogh letters W-a-g-mundinga. Read here more on old Anglo-Frisian letter W.