Tengwar

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Note: Some of the tengwar used in this article may not display properly unless tengwar fonts are
installed.
Tengwar

The word "Tengwar" written using the Tengwar script in the Quenya mode
Type Alternative abugida or alphabet according to the "mode"
Languages a number of Tolkien's constructed
languages,Quenya and Sindarin, English
Creator J. R. R. Tolkien
Time period 1930spresent
Parent systems
Sarati
Tengwar
ISO 15924 Teng, 290
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.


First article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English, written with a spelling-based pointed mode
of tengwar.
The Tengwar
[1]
are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe ofMiddle-
earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fanor, and used first to write the angelic
tongue Valarin and the Elven tongues: Quenya and Telerin. Later a great number of languages of
Middle-earth were written using the tengwar, including Sindarin. Tolkien used tengwar to writeEnglish:
most of Tolkien's tengwar samples are actually in English.
Contents
[hide]
1 Fictional history and terminology
2 Nonfictional history
o 2.1 Precursors
o 2.2 Tengwar
3 Description
o 3.1 Letters
3.1.1 Regularly formed letters
3.1.2 Irregularly formed letters
o 3.2 Tehtar
4 Modes
o 4.1 matehtar
o 4.2 Full writing
o 4.3 Modes for various languages
5 Encoding schemes
o 5.1 Non-Unicode
o 5.2 Unicode
6 Non Middle-earth usage
7 See also
8 Notes and references
o 8.1 Notes
9 External links
[edit]Fictional history and terminology
According to The War of the Jewels (Appendix D to Quendi and Eldar), Fanor, when he created his
script, introduced a change in terminology. He called a letter, i.e. a written representation of a spoken
phoneme (tengw) a tengwa. Previously, any letter or symbol had been called
a sarat (from *sar "incise"). The alphabet ofRmil of Valinor, on which Fanor supposedly based his
own work, was known as sarati. It later became known as "Tengwar of Rmil". The plural
of tengwa was tengwar, and this is the name by which Fanor's system became known. Since,
however, in commonly used modes, an individual tengwa was equivalent to a consonant, the
term tengwar in popular use became equivalent to "consonant sign", and the vowel signs were known
asmatehtar. By loan-translation, the tengwar became known as tw (singular tw) in Sindarin, when
they were introduced to Beleriand. The letters of the earlier alphabet native to Sindarin were
called cirth (singular certh, probably from *kirte "cutting", and thus semantically analogous to
Quenya sarat). This term was loaned into exilic Quenya as certa, plural certar.
[edit]Nonfictional history
[edit]Precursors
The sarati, described in Parma Eldalamberon 13, a script developed by J. R. R. Tolkien in the late
1910s, anticipates many features of the tengwar, especially the vowel representation
by diacritics (which is found in many tengwar varieties), different tengwar shapes and a few
correspondences between sound features and letter shape features (though inconsistent).
Even closer to the tengwar is the Valmaric script, described in Parma Eldalamberon 14, which J. R. R.
Tolkien used from about 1922 to 1925. It features many tengwar shapes, the inherent vowel [a] found
in some tengwar varieties, and the tables in the samples V12 and V13 show an arrangement that is
very similar to one of the primary tengwar in the classical Quenya "mode".
Jim Allan (An introduction to Elvish, ISBN 0-905220-10-2) compared the tengwar with the Universal
Alphabet of Francis Lodwick of 1686, both on grounds of the correspondence between shape features
and sound features, and of the actual letter shapes.
[edit]Tengwar


The inscription on the One Ring, written in the Black Speech of Mordor using tengwar
The tengwar were probably developed in the late 1920s or in the early 1930s. The Lonely Mountain Jar
Inscription, the first published Tengwar sample, dates to 1937 (The Hobbit, most editions). The full
explanation of the tengwar was published in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings in 1955.
The Mellonath Daeron Index of Tengwar Specimina (DTS) lists 74 known samples of tengwar by
Tolkien.
There are only few known samples predating publication of The Lord of the Rings (many of them
published posthumously):
DTS 1 The Lonely Mountain Jar Inscription, published 1937
DTS 13 Middle Page from the Book of Mazarbul
DTS 14 Last Page from the Book of Mazarbul, Last Line, this and the above one originally
prepared for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings
DTS 15 Steinborg Drawing Title
DTS 22 Ilbereth's Greeting from The Father Christmas Letters, dating to 1937
DTS 24 The Treebeard Page
DTS 50/51 Edwin Lowdham's Manuscript from The Notion Club Papers has Old English
language text written in tengwar (with a few Adnaic and Quenya words), dating to 1945/6.
DTS 10 The Brogan Tengwa-greetings, appearing in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, No. 118,
tentatively dated to 1948.
The following samples presumably predate the Lord of the Rings, but they were not explicitly
dated: DTS 16, DTS 17, DTS 18 Elvish Script Sample I, II, III, with parts of the English
poems Errantry and Bombadil, first published in the Silmarillion Calendar 1978, later in Pictures by
J. R. R. Tolkien, as well as DTS 23 So Lthien, a page of the English Lay of Leithan text
facsimiled in The Lays of Beleriand:299.
A few other samples, e.g. a tengwar mode for Gothic are known to exist, but remain unpublished to
date [3].
[edit]Description


The tengwar table, with the name of each tengwa.
[edit]Letters
The most notable characteristic of the tengwar script is that the shapes of the letters correspond to
the distinctive features of the sounds they represent.
[edit]Regularly formed letters
Most letters are constructed by a combination of two basic shapes: a vertical stem (either long or short)
and either one or two rounded bows (which may or may not be underscored, and may be on the left or
right of the stem).
These principal letters are divided into four series ("tmar") that correspond to the main places of
articulation and into six rows ("tyeller") that correspond to the main manners of articulation. Both vary
among modes.
Each series is headed by the basic signs composed of a vertical stem descending below the line, and a
single bow. These basic signs represent the voiceless stop consonants for that series. For the classical
Quenya mode, they are/t/, /p/, /k/ and /k/, and the series are
named tincotma, parmatma, calmatma, and quessetma, respectively; tma means "series" in
Quenya.
In rows of the general use, there are the following correspondences between letter shapes and
manners of articulation:
Doubling the bow turns the voiceless consonant into a voiced one.
Raising the stem above the line turns it into the corresponding fricative.
Shortening it (so it is only the height of the bow) creates the corresponding nasal stop. It must be
noted though that in most modes, the signs with shortened stem and single bow do not correspond
to the voiceless nasals, but to the approximants.
In addition to these variations of the tengwar shapes, there is yet another variation, the use of stems
that are extended both above and below the line. This shape may correspond to other consonant
variations required. Except for some English abbreviations, it is not used in any of the better known
tengwar modes, but it occurs in a Qenya mode where the tengwa Parma with extended stem is used
for /pt/ and the tengwa Calma with extended stem is used for /kt/
[2]
. The tengwar with raised stems
sometimes occur in glyph variants that look like extended stems, as seen in the inscription of the One
Ring.
Here is an example from the parmatma (the signs with a closed bow on the right side) in the "general
use" of the tengwar:

The basic sign, named parma, (with descending stem) represents /p/ (it happens to look much like
the Latin letter P).
With the bow doubled, umbar, it represents /b/.
With a raised stem, formen, it represents /f/.
With a raised stem and a doubled bow, ampa, it represents generally /v/ but
possibly /mp/ (depending upon the language).
With a short stem and double bow, malta, it represents /m/.
With short stem and single bow, vala, it represents /w/, or /v/ if that has the phonological behaviour
of a sonorant (as e.g. in Quenya).
In some languages such as Quenya, which do not contain any voiced fricatives other than "v", the
raised stem + doubled bow row is used for the very common nasalized stops (nt, mp). In such cases,
the "w" sign in the previous paragraph is used for "v". In the mode of Beleriand, found on the door
to Moria, the bottom tyelle is used for nasals (i.e., vala is used for /m/) and the fifth tyelle for doubled
nasals (malta for /mm/).
[edit]Irregularly formed letters
There are additional letters that do not have regular shapes. They may represent,
e.g., /r/, /l/, /s/ and /h/. Their use varies considerably from mode to mode. Some aficionados have
added more letters not found in Tolkien's writings for use in their modes.
[edit]Tehtar
A tehta (Quenya "marking") is a diacritic placed above or below the tengwa. They can represent
vowels, consonant doubling, or nasal sound.
As Tolkien explained in the ROTK appendix, the tehtar for vowels resemble Latin diacritics: circumflex
() /a/, acute () /e/, dot (i) /i/, left curl /o/, and right curl /u/. (Some languages without /o/, such as the
Black Speech, use left curl for /u/; other languages reverse the signs for /e/ and /i/.) A vowel occurring
alone is drawn on the vowel carrier, which resembles dotless i () for a short vowel or dotless j () for a
long vowel.
[edit]Modes
Just as with any alphabetic writing system, every specific language written in tengwar requires a
specific orthography, depending on the phonology of that language. These tengwar orthographies are
usually called modes. Some modes follow pronunciation, while others follow traditional orthography.
Some modes map the basic consonants to /t/, /p/, /k/ and /k/, while others use them to
represent /t/, /p/, /t/ and /k/.
[edit]matehtar
In some modes, called matehtar (or vowel tehtar) modes, the vowels are represented
with diacritics called tehtar (Quenya for 'signs'; correspondingsingular: tehta, 'sign'). These matehtar
modes can be loosely considered consonant scripts rather than true alphabets. In some matehtar
modes, the consonant signs feature an inherent vowel. These matehtar modes can be
considered alphasyllabaries.
matehtar modes can vary in that the vowel stroke can be placed either on top of the consonant
preceding it, as in Quenya, or on the consonant following, as in Sindarin, English, and the notorious
Black Speech inscription on the One Ring. The other main difference is in the fourth tyelle below,
where those letters with raised stems and doubled bows can be either voiced fricatives, as in Sindarin,
or nasalized stops, as in Quenya.
[edit]Full writing
In the full writing modes, the consonants and the vowels are represented by Tengwar. Only one such
mode is well-known. It is called the "mode ofBeleriand" and one can read it on the Doors of Drin.
[edit]Modes for various languages
Since the publication of the first official description of the Tengwar at the end of The Lord of the Rings,
others have created modes for other languages such
as English, Spanish, German, French, Finnish, Italian, Esperanto and Lojban.
Tolkien has used multiple modes for English, including full writing and matehtar alphabetic modes,
phonetic full modes and phonetic matehtar modes known from documents published after his death.
[edit]Encoding schemes
[edit]Non-Unicode
The contemporary de facto standard in the tengwar user community maps the tengwar characters onto
the ISO 8859-1 character encoding following the example of the tengwar typefaces by Dan Smith. This
implies a major flaw: If no corresponding tengwar font is installed, a string of nonsense
charactersappears.
Since there are not enough places in ISO 8859-1's 191 codepoints for all the signs used in tengwar
orthography, certain signs are included in a "tengwar A" font which also maps its characters on ISO
8859-1, overlapping with the first font.
For each tengwar diacritic, there are four different codepoints that are used depending on the width of
the character which bears it.
Other tengwar typefaces with this encoding include Johan Winge's Tengwar Annatar, Mns Bjrkman's
Tengwar Parmait, Enrique Mombello's Tengwar lfica or Michal Nowakowski's Tengwar Formal (note
that most of these differ in details).
The following sample shows the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in
English, according to the traditional English orthography. It should look similar to the picture at the top
of the page, but if no tengwar font is installed, it will appear as a jumble of characters because the
corresponding ISO 8859-1 characters will appear instead.
j# 9t&5# w`Vb%_ 6EO w6Y5 e7`V`V
2{( zVj# 5% 2x%51T` 2{( 7v%1+-
4hR 7EO 2{$yYO2 y4% 7]F85^ 2{(
z5^8I`B5$I( 2{( dyYj2 zE1 1yY6E2_
5^( 5#4^(7 5% `C 8q7T1T W
w74^(692^H --
Note: Some browsers may not display these characters properly.
[edit]Unicode
A proposal has been made by Michael Everson to include the tengwar in the Unicode standard. The
codepoints are subject to change; the range U+016080 to U+0160FF in the SMP is tentatively
allocated for tengwar according to the current Unicode roadmap.
Tengwar are currently included in the unofficial ConScript Unicode Registry, which assigns codepoints
in the Private Use Area. Tengwar are mapped to the range U+E000 to U+E07F; see External links.
The following Unicode sample (which repeats the one above) is meaningful when viewed under a
typeface supporting tengwar glyphs in the area defined in the ConScript tengwar proposal.
Some typefaces that support this proposal are Everson Mono, Tengwar
Telcontar, Constructium, Tengwar Formal Unicode, and FreeMonoTengwar (James
Kass's Code2000 and Code2001 use an older, incompatible version of the proposal).




[edit]Non Middle-earth usage
Tengwar script appears in a bound volume in the Within Temptation music video for "Stand My
Ground", though it appears to be a random selection of letters, with a tehta vowel appearing about
every five words or so. Many tengwar are also repeated for no apparent reason.
Another instance of this stylistic use of tengwar is the computer game Atlantis: The Lost Tales; again
the tengwar are used meaninglessly. Tengwar is also used in Alone in the Dark, a comic book, as a
typeface describing an arcane language.
Spanish footballer Fernando Torres has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm that reads "Fernando" in
tengwar, as does his former Atletico Madrid team mate Sergio Agero whose reads "Kun Agero".
(Fernando's tattoo uses matehtar, although inconsistently, with Sindarin mode for the first two vowels,
and Quenya mode for the last "o"; and also contains "n+(n)d" when just "(n)d" (with a nasalisation bar)
would have been sufficient.
[3]

Actors Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, Viggo
Mortensen, and Sean Bean have tattoos of the English word nine written in Quenya-mode tengwar.
Contrary to popular belief, these tattoos do not spell out the "Elvish" (Quenya or Sindarin) word for nine
(Quenya nert or Sindarin neder) but instead simply the letters for the English word nine in
tengwar. John Rhys-Davies declined the tattoo, but his dwarf body double got it in his place. They had
them done after the filming of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, since the characters they
played were the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring.
[citation needed]

[edit]See also

Middle-earth portal
Sarati
Cirth
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
Elvish languages (Middle-earth)
Namri
[edit]Notes and references
Derzhanski, Ivan A. "The Fanorian Tengwar and the Typology of Phonetic Writing
Systems." Vinyar Tengwar 41 (2000): 20-23.
Hostetter, Carl F. ""Si man i-yulmar n(g)win enquatuva": A Newly-Discovered Tengwar
Inscription." Vinyar Tengwar 21 (1992): 6-10.
Smith, Arden R., Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr. "The Semiotics of the Writing Systems of
Tolkien's Middle-earth." In Semiotics around the World: Synthesis in Diversity, I-II, ed. Irmengard
Rauch, 1239-42. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.
[edit]Notes
1. ^ It is a Quenya word which can be translated "letters" ; see Lord of the Rings, Appendix E II
Writing.
2. ^ See Parma Eldalamberon 19 (2010), pp. 4143.
3. ^ [1] Sergio's tattoo is more correct, although quesse is used instead of calma. [2]