Tengwar

[Menelvagor]

Does anyone know Tengwar and can they explain it to me?

One of the appendices ( I forget which) explains it, and I've been trying to figure it out from that, but it just doesn't seem to be working for me. Could someone just explain what sounds are created when you raise the stem, double the bow, etc. I don't like the chart he uses, it would be easier (for me) if I was just told what each alteration does. Thanks!
-Menelvagor:)

[Wayfarer]

If you don't like the chart, he explains in the following few pages.

[Graham]

Tengwar can be used for many tongues, and there is a large variation among the written examples from the Third Age. There are also variations from within each language which can make the study of Tengwar laborious and sometimes frustrating. Personally, I find it easier to write Quenya in Tengwar then to write my native English. The reason for this is that Quenya is written phonemically, and Tengwar is a phonemic writing system. The Latin alphabet and the English language are not phonemic, therefore, writing English in Tengwar produces its own problems.
Also when studying English written in Tengwar you will notice that the various English speaking peoples have different ways of sounding the same word and therefore will write it differently.
The characters of Tengwar represent certain sounds, not letters. Basically Tengwar uses three main elements; a stem (telco), a bow (lúva), and diacritic marks (ómatehtar, or more often called tehtar)for the vowels. Tilde marks are also used for long consonants.

How Tengwar stems and bows are organized will represent a certain group of related sounds. The stem determines how the sound is articulated (normal, shortened, raised, extended) and the bow where in the mouth it is made (open or closed). Exactly what sound values are assigned to which tengwa can be adjusted to the needs of a particular language. Because there are so many different ways to ‘sound’ words and leters in English you will see different ways of writing the same word in Tengwar; depends on what part of the world one lives in. Anyway the different adjustments are called ‘modes’. So we have a mode for each and every language with its own ‘rules’. You need to know what language you are writing and what tengwa represent what sounds.
May I suggest you visit: http://hem.passagen.se/mansb/at/

Tengwar writing is strictly phonographic, and should thus be unaffected by the complexities of the Roman orthography for English. But even Tolkien was influenced by his usual manner of writing. There are no short cuts. Hard work will make it happen.

Enjoy the journey.
Graham

[Menelvagor]

Thank you, that was the problem i had with the chart and it's corrosponding explainations, it layed it out to rigidly, I think the variations in it's useage are what makes it interesting to me.:)

[Menelvagor]

umm... actually, the link you posted isn't working for me, it asks me to download something, but both the download and the page that comes up online after the download are blank.

[Graham]

Originally posted by Menelvagor
umm... actually, the link you posted isn't working for me, it asks me to download something, but both the download and the page that comes up online after the download are blank.


I just clicked on the link in the post above and it loaded the page just finr.
Try again as it seems to work perfectly for me.

Cheers,
Graham