Basic Tengwar Buttons - Tutorial

Introduction - Overview of Relevant Tengwar - Add Reply - New Topic - New Poll

Introduction

Welcome to my "Tengwar Buttons for Tolkien Boards" tutorial. The point of this document is to explain my choices for the tengwar text of my message board buttons. If you really aren't interested in the details and just want to make some buttons of your own, see basic buttons. If you are interested, trying to learn tengwar, or not sure you agree with my choices, then read on!

Note that there are occasionally small links in parentheses after a particular section. These will take you to a more detailed discussion (probably more than you ever wanted to know) which I advise you to skip unless you are genuinely interested.

The nature of the tengwar is such that there is no one correct way to use them. They are designed to be flexible—you can, in theory, adapt them to match the sounds of any language. Tolkien used several distinct modes for writing with tengwar.

Here we are only concerned with the ones that can be used for English, of which there are two. The first, the one used on the title page of The Lord of the Rings is characterized by the use of "tehtar" to represent vowels. The second, which uses independent tengwar for vowels, was used often by Tolkien but is not as wellk now. On the internet and among Tolkien fans, the first mode is used almost exclusively, so that is what I will use here. The tengwar were originally meant to be used phonetically, but I choose to duplicate English spellings instead of English pronuncations. (Why I choose not to use tengwar phonetically.)

Tengwar

These are the eight letters that we will need (plus an extra to demonstrate the difference between the two tengwar for r). Note that some of them are very similar—it's important to pay very close attention when you type using a tengwar font. Typos are easy to miss (and easy to make).

These are the letters themselves, the tengwar that give this system of writing its name (actually, "tengwar" simply means "letters"). "Tengwar" is plural; the singular form is "tengwa". It is more correct to always refer to them as tengwar, but I will also call them letters.

The names for the tengwar, used on the image above, are the "original" Elvish (Quenya) names. The letter in the name that is associated with that tengwa's sound is in bold. Sometimes they don't quite match, because the sounds of English are not the same as the sounds of Quenya.

Tehtar
Here are the five tehtar needed for the basic buttons. Tehtar are used for vowels and they go above other letters, like accents (though they represent independent sounds). In the English style, they go above the letter that comes next, so you read from top to bottom. When there isn't a letter in the right place, a tehta can be placed above a carrier symbol which looks like a dotless lowercase i or j.

The a, e, i, and o tehtar are fairly well known and there are many examples of them being used by Tolkien. The y tehta is only a guess, but it is a fairly good guess, and it is used by convention since we need a way to represent y when it is used as a vowel.

Add Reply

The first word, "add", should be read from top to bottom (as in the Sindarin mode):

• The triple-dot accent is the tehta for the letter a.
• The only letter is ando, the tengwa for the letter d.
• The curly line (it's called a "tilde") underneath indicates that the letter should be doubled: in this case, it because "dd". You could use a straight line instead. (Why I use a tilde.)

The word "reply" is also fairly straightforward:

• Start with the tengwa rómen, which is used for the letter r when it comes before a vowel (óre is also used for r, but it is used before a consonant and at the end of a word).
• The acute accent, the tehta for the letter e, goes above the next letter.
• The letter p is the tengwa parma (which means "book", by the way).
• The letter l (that's lowercase L) is the tengwa lambe.
• Since there is no letter after it, the tehta for y goes above the short carrier. (Why I use the short carrier.)

New Topic

"new"

• n is represented by the tengwa númen.
• The acute accent tehta for the vowel e goes above the next letter.
• w in English is the tehta vala.

"topic"

• t is represented by the tengwa tinco.
• The o "curl" tehta goes above the next letter.
• p is the tengwa parma.
• The tehta for the vowel i is a simple dot.
• c is represented by the tengwa quesse, which stands for the k sound (there is no tengwa specifically for c).

New Poll

"new"

"poll"

• Again, p is the tengwa parma.
• The o tehta goes above the next letter.
• L is the tengwa lambe.
• The tilde under lambe indicates that the letter is doubled. An under bar instead of an under tilde is also possible. (There is no particular reason to use one instead of the other.)