Tengwar for English: Modifiers, Shorthand, and Stuff

Goal: Finish off our "bag of tricks" for writing English with tengwar, including learning enough to be able to read Tolkien's title page inscriptions.

You should already know: Tengwar basics. I'll assume you are familiar with the contents of my previous tengwar tutorial.

These tricks are optional - literally. There are examples of tengwar inscriptions which use a certain modifier or shorthand spelling once and then later in the same inscription spell it out or arrange it differently (see the title page to The Silmarillion).

You will see that there are often many different ways to write one word or phrase. (It is even quite reasonable to make up your own shorthand for words that you use often.) Obviously, if we want to understand each other, we need to avoid using our own personal spellings, but there are certain variations, modifiers, and shorcuts that are generally accepted and can be assumed to be understood by a tengwar-literate audience.

Basically, if you want just anyone to be able to read what you write, you should keep it as simple as possible. Assuming that this is already a lost cause (since most people don't read tengwar at all), you are probably going for elegance and artistry (or you just want it to look as cool as possible ;). If that's what you're after, this tutorial will help add that extra touch of authenticity.

More tricks with vowels.

Silent "e".

	In the English written language, we seem to be very fond of the silent "e". It comes up so often that there is a special shorthand for it in tengwar. You can show a following silent (unpronounced) "e" by placing a single dot below the tengwa it follows.
	You don't have to do this, but whenever the letter before the silent "e" is an "r", I don't use the "r" that goes before a vowel, since properly it is meant to go before a vowel sound, and the whole point here is that the "e" is not pronounced! Note that this doesn't have to happen at the end of the word. This one could be the first half of "werewolf", for example.

Following "a", "o".

Can you use the tehta as a following vowel for any other vowels? You bet! The most likely candidates are "a" and "o". For "a", use an upside-down triple dot tehta (don't use the circumflex shortcut, as it is easy to confuse with the tehta for "y").

Technical notes.

	The reason there are two possibilities for a is that it is the most common vowel sound in Quenya. The circumflex is quicker and easier to write. Think of it as a kind of "shortcut". If you intend to imply formal writing, use the triple dot. If you intend more casual writing, you can choose whichever you like.
	You can switch the tehtar for "e" and "i", if you like. What I have been using is most common in the tengwar writing community, though, and most likely to be understood.
	The tehta I have been using for vowel "y" is technically supposed to be for "y" when it comes at the end of a word. I think. We don't have a lot of evidence here. If we're going to stick to English spellings, though, we need to adopt a convention for vowel "y", and this seems the most reasonable.

English shorthand.

There are certain very little words that come up very, very often when writing English. Tolkien uses "shorthand" for these (see the title page inscription for The Lord of the Rings). You can fairly easily see that they are just variants of the most important sounds in the words they represent.

Modifiers

These are pretty much standard across the board and can be used with most tengwar modes (including the Elvish).

Following "s".

	Especially popular for plurals, you can indicate that an "s" comes after by adding a little curl to the right side of the tengwa. A variety of styles are acceptable - what is important is that it is clearly a curl, and clearly attached (so you can tell it apart from "o" or "u").
	Note the spelling of "ks" for "x". I didn't mention "x" earlier because I was saving it for this little trick. ;) Except in the rare cases when it is pronounced as "z", spell "x" as "ks" - the s-curl modifier is an elegant way to do this.

Doubled consonants.

To show that a consonant is meant to be doubled, you can put either a thin bar or a tilde (the squiggly line) under it.

Preceding nasals: N or M.

You can put a bar or a tilde above the tengwar to indicate that a nasal ("n" or "m") comes before it.

Generally, the nasal will always be "n", except when using tengwar from column II, when it will be "m". (This tends to be the case in our language, anyway, so you won't often have to think very hard to figure it out.) "nt", "nd", "mb", "mp", and "nk" seem to come up most often. For "ng", of course, you would just use the appropriate tengwa, and "mm" or "nn" you would just treat as doubled letters.

Punctuation?

I can't really see any way to improve on what Dan Smith has to say about punctuation. In general, punctuation for tengwar is used sparingly.

If you are feeling adventurous or are fond of math, you might check out what he has to say about numbers, as well.

A challenge!

	Part One: You should be able to read this, now! (See how much cooler it seems when it is written in tengwar?) If you can (and I am using the honor system here), then you are entitled to use this blinkie:
	Part Two: You do have a copy of The Lord of the Rings, right? You should be able to read the bottom part of the title page inscription. (Note that Tolkien spells sort of phonetically. You should be able to get enough of the sense of it to figure out the words.)

References

I learned to write with tengwar from reading the appendices to The Lord of the Ring and by deciphering the inscription on the title page. I have learned quite a bit from a variety of online sources, which are listed here under 'references'. I wrote most of this off the top of my head (so any errors are my own fault), but I did reference Dan Smith's help files to double-check some points.