Text with Tengwar (Introduction)

It seems like everyone is making Elvish dolls these days. How do you make yours stand out? Easy! Pay attention to getting the details right, show 'em you know your Tolkien...and then label it in tengwar. :) (It's authentic, it looks cool, and it makes you look smart! ;)

If you don't know what I am talking about, the tengwar are the script letters used by Tolkien's Elves (and by most other folks in Middle-Earth). They show up everywhere in The Lord of the Rings - the writing on the One Ring is in tengwar, and in the movie even Bilbo's party signs show traces of tengwar vowel markings (check out the triple dot over the letter "a", for example). It's a flexible system that can (theoretically) be used to write in any language.

Here's your first tip: If you don't know how to use tengwar, then don't use tengwar. You can't just download a font and use that on your English (or other non-Elvish) text. The tengwar letters don't match the letters on your keyboard, so if you act like they do, you will look really, really silly. (And it's really, really obvious to anyone who knows a little tengwar.) But never fear - it is actually not very difficult to learn.

Beginner

Don't have the time or the inclination to do all that work? Now you can cheat! Here are some names and phrases that appear in The Lord of the Rings and that might be logical to write using tengwar.

Quenya spellings:	Sindarin spellings:

Want to learn how to write something specific? Send me a note or leave me a comment on my blog.

Intermediate

You want to learn how to come up with your own tengwar text? Check out my tengwar basics for English tutorial.

It's a beautiful, elegant writing system - it is also multi-layered and can get quite complicated! If you are trying to learn and get stuck on something, feel free to contact me and I'll see if I can help. (Just remember I can be slow to reply...)

Advanced

You can use my own pixelized tengwar chart to help you get started and to save time. :) (Right-click and hit "Save As...", as I'm sure you already know how to do.)