Isolated people in Sweden only stopped using runes 100 years ago

> And local dialects are anything but unusual, they appear even in not so isolated regions of small european countries.

The point is that it isn't a dialect, it's accepted by linguists as a separate language. Even though the Swedish government refuses to accept that, though in less painful ways than when they tried to beat it out of the schoolkids (which they did until the fifties).

- Though it's just another alphabet, it was independently invented. This is pretty cool. Alphabets (and related Abjads) have only ever been invented historically very few times and t hey tend to be variations on a few earlier systems. It's not at all obvious that this is a way to encode sounds and many more cultures use syllabaries or abugida (2 of the three native Japanese systems) or some kind of logograph system (like Chinese). Even Tsalagi ended up turning Latin characters into a syllabary.

- Runes look like they're uniquely useful for scratching into wood, just like various scripts in Mesopotamia (like Ugaritic or Akkadian) work best when pressed into wet clay with a stylus and Arabic, Chinese and Korean work best written with a brush. It's interesting how different systems have kind of an optimal medium to work in.

I was always amazed by the linguistic diversity in Italy, much of which is anything but isolated. Even in the plains of the Veneto, you can ride a bike far enough for the locals to tell that you're from a different area (without even looking at what's written on your jersey!).

For example, Mirandês in northern Portugal.

It looks like this, http://frolesmirandesas.blogspot.de/

Icelandic, by virtue of having been near completely isolated for hundreds of years, is also the modern language most closely related to old norse, in much the same way American english is closer to the english of the enlightenment than modern British english is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

I could well be wrong here (please correct me if I am).

Wasn't Old Norse divided into Eastern and Western? With Icelandic and Faroese related to Western Old Norse whilst Swedish descends from Eastern. This would imply that Älvdalska would be related to Eastern Old Norse - hence not totally unique but still of great interest.

  > because they speak an unique old Norse tongue

  They don't speak Old Norse

http://www.seekthemystery.com

    sub infix:<ᛈ>($ᛣ, $ᛤ) {
        $ᛣ + $ᛤ
    }

    my @ᚠᛁᛒ := 0, 1, * ᛈ * ... *;
    say @ᚠᛁᛒ[100];

    from unicodedata import name as ᚾᚮᛗᚨ
    ᛊᛈᛚᛁᛏ = str.split

    def ᚢᚾᛒᛂᚺᚱᛂᚮᛊᚨᚾ(ᚥᚮᚱᛑ):
        ᚮᚢᛏ = []
        for ᛍ in ᚥᚮᚱᛑ:
            if 'ᚠ' <= ᛍ <= 'ᛪ':
                ᚾ = ᛊᛈᛚᛁᛏ(ᚾᚮᛗᚨ(ᛍ))[-1]
                ᚮᚢᛏ += [ᚾ]
            else:
                ᚮᚢᛏ += [ᛍ]
        return ᚮᚢᛏ

One would expect it to be possible to #define most of the keywords and functions one would need using the C or C++ preprocessor, though the actual #include and #define macros would still be in Latin script.

Unfortunately, the C standard (Annex D of http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf) does not allow runes in identifier names, but it would work for characters explicitly mentioned in the standard and supported by one's C compiler.

Here's my attempt:

    #include <stdio.h>
    
    #define _ᚠᛟᚱ for
    #define _ᛁᚠ if
    #define _ᛖᛚᛊᛖ else
    #define _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ return
    #define _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ main
    #define _ᛈᚱᛁᚾᛏᚠ(...) printf(__VA_ARGS__)
    #define _ᛊᛏᚱᛚᛖᚾ(...) strlen(__VA_ARGS__)
    typedef int _ᛁᚾᛏ;
    typedef char _ᚲᚺᚨᚱ;
    
    _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ(_ᛁᚾᛏ _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ, ᚲᚺᚨᚱ *_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ)
    {
        _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛁ;
    
        _ᚠᛟᚱ(_ᛁ = 1; _ᛁ < _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ; _ᛁ++) {
            _ᛁᚠ(_ᛊᛏᚱᛚᛖᚾ(_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[ᛁ]) & 1) {
                _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ("Hello, %s\n", _ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[_ᛁ]);
            } _ᛖᛚᛊᛖ {
                _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ("Goodbye, %s\n", _ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[_ᛁ]);
            }
        }
    
        _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ 0;
    }

    rune_c.c:16:2: error: non-ASCII characters are not
    allowed outside of literals and identifiers
    _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ(_ᛁᚾᛏ _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ, ᚲᚺᚨᚱ *_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ)
     ^

For other languages, one should be able to use Ruby metaprogramming to make it possible to write Ruby using nothing but runes and punctuation. One would have to define runic methods to replace the functionality def, class, module, and related keywords, but tricks like instance_eval make that possible.

A hundred years ago it would be close to 100% christianity. The runes was simply a traditional way of writing. Norse mythology is of course a lot of fun but it's sad how little we know of it and it's traditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astur-Leonese_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragonese_language

This languages are romanced derivative and could you think as brother/cousins of Spanish

various hieroglyphic writing systems are pictographics. runes are not