How to Write with Elvish Letters By Nenetta J.R.R. Tolkien, when he made his brilliant story of Middle Earth, created an entire language for the Elves. Although Elvish, as all languages, is complex and takes a long time to learn, writing with the beautiful characters is quite a bit easier. These are instructions on how to write in English using these characters. To begin, approach this as a code. Each character (Tengwa) represents a sound. Here are the Tengwar that represent consonant sounds: The consonants
One some occasions alternate consonant Tengwar are used. Alternate consonants used when preceding vowels
The “Tehtar” are simply vowels. The Tehtar
How to use the Tengwar
The Tengwar are used phonetically, which
means that each character represents a sound, rather than a corresponding English letter. For example, cloud would be spelled klawd. Because of slight differences in pronunciation, you might have to be a bit creative when reading something someone else wrote. A Tehta is written over the consonant that follows it. For instance, cloud is written . The “o” Tehta goes over the “w”. What about long vowels? Various ways of writing them exist, but the simplest way it to simply use a long vowel carrier rather than write the tehtar above the consonant. ie. pain is . Note that the “ai” is spelled with a single long “a”. What if the vowel is used on its own? You use a vowel carrier. Short a “short vowel carrier”. In the same way, long vowels use a “long carrier.” Consonants are doubled by adding a wavy line beneath them (nn= ). An overbar represents a preceding “m” or “n” sound. For
example, taunt is (“au” is spelled with a short “a” and the overbar represents the “n” sound). Do not use the overbar if it leads to confusion over “m” or “n” (i.e. run, rum). Sometimes, a consonant is changed if it comes before a vowel. These are shown in the diagram “Alternate consonants used when preceding vowels.” For example, rain is written as . (Note instead of ). If an “s” is at the end of a word, an “s hook” ( or ) may be applied. Rains would be or . Punctuation (if you are writing in English) is identical to English punctuation. However, Tolkien did create a few Elvish punctuation marks that may be used. Punctuation marks
Numerals
Numbers are used in the same way as English numbers, except they are written from right to left. So 1938 is written as 8391 ( ). Eleven has its own symbol because a double 1 (11, or ) looks like a 2 (
).
Hopefully, with these instructions, you will soon be able to write in Tengwar!