Talk:Tengwar

The link below the picture (in English) is misleading, because it leads people to believe that the Tengwar script shown in the image may also be represented in the English language. Instead, that link points you to the English Language wiki article.

I've clarified it. -Aranel ("Sarah") 21:45, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The link http://www.geocities.com/realteng/ appears to be broken to me. <Guest> Jan 20th, '05

re the tengwar an abugida? -- Error

No. However, the tengwar mode for Quenya is an abjad. -- arj

There is, however, an abugida mode for Quenya. J. 'mach' wust 16:21, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There really ought to be pictures of the tengwar here. Anyone up for making some out of the free tengwar fonts? -- arj

What would the copyright status of this be: Proposal to encode Tengwar in Plane 1 of ISO/IEC 10646-2 (http://anubis.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1641/n1641.htm)? ESR used it in his Esperanto mode (http://catb.org/~esr/tengwar/lojban-tengwar.html) so I suspect it's public domain or some fairly loose license. General Wesc 02:33, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I found 17 seperate errors in the image, probably because it was transliterated by the computer (it's like Babelfish with letters). Óre and rómen mixed up, long vowels not represented, clusters represented as seperate tengwar, etc. Don't even get me started on the diphthongs. I'd be willing to make a corrected image, however. Should I do another one with the fonts, or a hand-written example? --HunterX 04:39, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

i'm aware of the errors :-( i just haven't had the time yet to fix them! If you want to take a try at it, please do! Anárion 08:15, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Tengwar and the Latin alphabet

Again, the Tengwar modes are far far greater in magnitude than any differences between Latin languages. The Tengwar are just a set of signs that you can assign any values to like to. With Latin orthographies, most letters have sounds similar to those used in Latin. There are usually one or two variations, perhaps more, but there's no orthography that jettisons the Latin sound values entirely and starts again, like Tengwar modes do. Morwen - Talk 21:10, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most tengwar modes are more or less based on how the tengwar are assigned to sounds for Quenya or Sindarin too. Latin-based orthographies vary widely: check out English, French, Pinyin, romaji, and !Xóõ. Trying to read one as another out loud results in gibberish. — Gwalla | Talk 02:31, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What is more, the one or two variations that some tengwar can have are always regular, corresponding to the témar/tyeller ratio. I'd rather inlcude that note on the variability more below where témar and tyeller are discussed, after all since that variability is not a distinctive feature of the tengwar script, but is also found in any other alphabetic script used for more than just one language. The variability of the Latin alphabet is, other than the variability of the tengwar, highly arbitrary, depending only on the history of the different languages. J. 'mach' wust 11:55, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I was happy with the version that removed the mention of the Latin alphabet altogether. It's not really relevant to the article. — Gwalla | Talk 21:14, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree. It's not a characteristic of the tengwar script. What do you think, Morwen? J. 'mach' wust 12:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Which tengwar mode "jettisons the letters and starts again"? The older Eldarin modes (classical Quenya and Beleriandic Sindarin) use e.g. the calmatéma for velars, not for palatal(veolar)s, and the quessetéma for labialized velars, not for velars. The tyeller, however, remain basically unchanged (for the classical Quenya andotyelle and thúletyelle see below). This is comparable to the use of |t, d, n| for dentals in French but for alveolars in English.

The difference between the andotyelle prenasalized in classical Quenya and not prenasalized in the other modes is comparable to the difference between the Latin letters |p, t, k/c| aspirated in English but not aspirated in French. It's systematically slightly different pronunciations. Of course, the difference between [mb] and [b] might seem huge to us who distinguish the two, but to someone who distinguishes aspirated [t_h] from unaspirated [t] this difference will seem equally huge (or small).

The differences between |j| in Spanish and in English or between |z| in German and in English or between |y| in Czech and in English or between |u| in French and in English or between |th| in English and in French are comparable to the different uses of some of the óretyelle letters in (or to the classical Quenya thúletyelle): It's arbitrary differences. Not even to mention the very different uses of the acute in French, Hungarian, and Spanish, or the 'two points above' (diaeresis or umlaut) in English and German, etc. J. 'mach' wust 13:38, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The interesting thing about the Tengwar is its alienness and constructed nature, both within and without the mythology. Unlike the Latin, Greek whatever alphabets, where sound values have ended up associated with random letterforms, Tengwar presents a grid of symbols that can be used in any manner the user sees fit. It was designed by Feanor (Tolkien) as a systematic system.

The difference between say, Beleriandic Sindarin and Quenya modes are pretty huge in my book. Certainly there are conventions, like dental=col1, labial=col2, etc, but to focus on the conventions would be misleading. In particular, I draw your attention to the nasals. Quenya has voiced nasals on row 5, Sindarin has them on row 6! And look at the assignment of <r> and <v> on row 6 in Quenya. Rather random. It is patent nonsense to say the modes bear strong resemblance to Latin as you were doing. I was attempting to illustrate its special features and note its inherent differentness in comparison. Morwen - Talk 21:13, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's equally wrong to say that they bear no resemblance to Latin. Frankly, the comparison to Latin does not clarify anything about the Tengwar. BTW, that's not patent nonsense either. — Gwalla | Talk 02:59, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I haven't claimed any strong resemblance, I've just said that the tengwar modes are just as different from each other than the Latin script 'modes'. Consider the letter |x|: In Catalan it represents the sound /S/, but in English the sounds /ks/. That's at least as 'rather random' as classical Quenya /r/ vs. Beleriandic Sindarin /n/, and even more random than classical Quenya /v/ vs. Sindarin /m/ (by means of phonetic features). Also, it may be noteworth that Beleriandic Sindarin óre and vala are the only letters assigned unsystematically because it isn't entirely a nasal tyelle (like the númentyelle in all modes included Beleriandic Sindarin).

Certainly, the appendices of the Lord of the Ring say that the assignment is free, but it adds that it's only theoretically free and that the actual assignments in the actual languages this script is used for aren't free.

I repeat my suggestion that there should be a note with the use of the tyeller and témar (I think the irregularity of the Beleriandic Sindarin óretyelle is an information too specific to be mentioned in Wikipedia). Actually, having another look at the article, I'd say that this information is already covered by the first and the third paragraph of the section tengwar letters. But there might be a note on the difference to the Latin alphabet on the third paragraph, I think. J. 'mach' wust 08:01, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

extra letters

The extended series are not only mentioned, but also attested by J. R. R. Tolkien himself, so they can't be considered extra letters added by some aficionados. The only extra letters I could think of are stemless tinco, stemless parma, and stemless quesse. These are based on the assumption that the c-shaped letter is a stemless calma. But I haven't ever seen them used for whatever purpose, so they're not for use in their modes. (It's very strange that they are even included in the unicode proposal while other attested tengwar signs aren't.) That's why I removed the passage. J. 'mach' wust 11:38, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)