Talk:Tengwar

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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? ESR used it in his Esperanto mode so I suspect it's public domain or some fairly loose license. General Wesc 02:33, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Contents 1 Image 2 Tengwar and the Latin alphabet 3 extra letters 4 what's wrong with the other documents mentioned 5 suggestions 6 history 7 Alternate German Tengwar Mode 8 Autotransliterator 9 Tibetan script 10 evidence that this is still the "de facto standard" in spite of Unicode? 11 Difference between text and graphic

[edit] Image

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)

I have updated J. 'mach' wust's picture (which by the way is not the one mentioned above) with a similar one using the font Tengwar Telcontar instead, which I think is more typographically polished, and more similar to Tolkien's style of writing. I have also made some changes to the transcription, some of which are rather arbitrary (like the spelling of equal), and some which I think are more correct (free). However, I am by no means experienced with transcribing English into Tengwar, so please check for errors. Alatius 11:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I was probably mistaken in my transcription of endowed. I'm looking into how to upload a corrected version. (I'm a newbie here on Wikipedia.) Alatius 12:39, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

No, the image criticized above was another one, I created my one much later. I'd ask you to use the same transcription of equal I've taken, since Tolkien has transcribed all known instances of qu in this way; also, the final r in are (endowed) and in ...other (in) should be transcribed with the letter rómen, not óre, because the transcription of r is sensitive to the following sound even if it is in another word; and then, it is preferrable to transcribe the e of the ending -er in ...other and brother... not with an acute above the r, but with a dot below the preceding letter, since the former is predominantly found in manuscripts that ought to be written by dwarves, and dwarves are said to have a very bad skill in orthography. Your variants of free and ...hood are all right. You haven't corrected endowed yet, have you? The dot should be placed below the w. ― j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 17:37, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments; I stand corrected on all points - except possibly on other and brother. I chose the acute since the e is not silent in these words (like it is in herein, hope, some). I was under the impression that the dot below the tengwa is used in the phonemic modes to represent schwa, but not so in the orthographic mode, which is used in this image. To use the acute thus seems to me as the right decision. But please convince me that I'm wrong! Which are these manuscripts written by dwarves that you mentioned?

And no, I haven't updated the picture yet. As it turns out, since I have just now created an account, I am not yet entrusted to replace pictures (not even those I myself uploaded to begin with). I will replace it when I gain this right, supposedly in a couple of days. Alatius 20:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I updated the picture today, incorporating most of your corrections. However, I retain my transcription of other and brother... for the time being. Alatius 23:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

You may perfectly consider the e in other, brother to be silent, if you assume that what you pronounce in the second syllables of these words is not the e, but rather the r. The English language allows syllables not to have any vowel, but only a consonant. Other samples are middle, sudden, rhythm—the latter even written without the e. The supposedly dwarvish manuscripts I referred to were DTS 13 (and 14), whereas the non-dwarvish manuscripts (where words such as brother, other are rather written with a dot below) are DTS 10, 45, 48, 49. If I'm not mistaken, then the mentioning of the faulty orthography of the dwarves was in an essay in The Peoples of Middle-earth. ― j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 12:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] what's wrong with the other documents mentioned

Well, nothing, but I think it is of no help mentioning them here. At least they didn't add any information to an external history of the tengwar. The wording remain unpublished sounds very much influenced by the point of view of Lisa Star's page (and of others) that someone would deliberately refuse their publication, so I'd rather prefer the wording await publication which is less polemical. Lisa Star's page is not only polemical, but also out of date. -- j. 'mach' wust ^{ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x} 6 July 2005 22:46 (UTC)

well, look, I was trying to find material on the development of Tengwar. I couldn't find anything in HoME, and the only thing I could find online was LS referring to unpublished documents containing early forms of tengwar. If LS's page is 'out of date', I certainly couldn't find any page that is up to date. As for "await publication" vs. "remain unpublished", the latter is certainly more npov, simply stating that to date, they are unpublished, without speculating about the future. I don't know if the elfcon guys will or won't publish their stuff. It's been twelve years now, and at the present pace, I estimate that by 2099, when all JRRT's papers will be in the public domain, they'll have edited maybe two thirds or so. In fact, "await publication" smacks more of LS's impatience than simply stating that they are inaccessible. en Gruess, dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 09:20 (UTC)

The wording is okay then. As to Lisa Star's site not being up to date: I was thinking of further documents mentioned in more recent "elfcon" publications, or of reprints being made available. From what I guess, the material on early tengwar is about to be published in the next issue(s?) of Parma Eldalamberon, and I don't doubt that Arden R. Smith will again do an excellent job. Grüeß! -- j. 'mach' wust ^{ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x} 7 July 2005 10:21 (UTC)

of course, the quality of their editing is impeccable! it's just that they seem to think no-one on the planet would be capable of similar results. see the prolongued discussion on Talk:elfcon :) but that's hardly the point here. We just need to gather as much information as is possible at this point, and for that purpose, Lisa Star's page is still a valuable source, although that may change once the stuff is actually published. dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 10:33 (UTC)

D Bachmann writes: "I don't know if the elfcon guys will or won't publish their stuff. It's been twelve years now, and at the present pace, I estimate that by 2099, when all JRRT's papers will be in the public domain, they'll have edited maybe two thirds or so." On what basis do you make this "estimate"? Do you know what portion of the documents have already been published? If so, how would you know? Is _this_ the sort of "npov" that Wikipedia espouses? Or is that found in "they seem to think no-one on the planet would be capable of similar results" -- cite even ONE statement to that effect from any of us, or please keep your biased, uninformed misrepresentations of the status and formation of our project off Wikipedia, please. Carl F. Hostetter.

You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. This is not an article where NPOV is enforced, but a discussion page where people are free to express their opinions. If, as here, an opinion is based on a lack of information, the most constructive approach toward correction is to provide that information. I invite you to do so. (And please note that the comments to which you are objecting were made nearly five months ago, prior to any more recent discussions you may have had on other talk pages.)

Actually, material contributions from someone of your standing would be most welcome here. You may have seen that Wikipedia is not a resource for publication of original research (see WP:NOR), but any research already published that you would be willing to contribute would, IMO, be highly valuable. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:07, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't think I am under any misapprehension. DB's lack of "npov" was by way of _explaining his editorial decisions in compiling the article_. (Please re-read the thread of the discussion.) Since that editorial practice is clearly based on a pretty strong bias against my colleagues and me, as shown by his uniformed comments about our project's status and formation, I find it a relevant reflection on the pov of the article. The questioning of which, I remind you again, was what started this thread in the first place. Carl F. Hosteter

If you have specific POV issues with the article as it stands, it would be helpful to point them out so that someone can address them. I don't think that can be done by guessing at the motivations of individual editors. Looking over the article history from that period and what appears to be the relevant section, the only remaining and possibly POV reference that seems connected to this discussion is: "A few other samples, e.g. a tengwar mode for Gothic are known to exist, but remain unpublished to date." It references a link [1] -- and if you find that page annoying you have my sympathies; were I in your position it'd annoy me too. But it's included as a reference for the claim being made, and about two-thirds of the way down I find, "§74. A Fëanorian Tengwar mode for Gothic and Taliska was edited and presented by Arden Smith at the 1994 Elfcon, according to VT35:7, but nothing further is known of this." (The passive voice implies that no one knows, but plainly this is false. The writer means he doesn't know.) At any rate, if you believe this or anything else in Tengwar is still slanted unfairly, either where I quoted above or in some other place that I missed you can do as you like to it -- or let us know here what your objections are, and I or someone else (time permitting) will do our best to accomodate them. (In general, only drastic or controversial edits need to be discussed in talk pages. If a minor tweak to the phrasing will make the article more acceptable to you, go for it.)

But again, you're replying to a post made at the beginning of July, prior to your discussions with dab in September and October at Talk:elfcon. Is it not possible that he has modified his views somewhat as a result of those discussions? It doesn't really signify that the remarks remain on the talk page here. Standard Wikipedia practice is to not remove any material from talk pages. When they become too large the material is moved to an archive page in a subdirectory, not deleted.

Incidentally, a convenient way to sign your posts is to type four tildes at the end ~~~~. Unless you've modified your sig in your Preferences this will sign you as Aelfwine followed by a timestamp. TCC (talk) (contribs) 02:24, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure, it's possible he's changed his view. But since any such change isn't reflected here, I feel entitled to defend myself and my colleagues from the snide (and obviously uninformed -- how COULD he know the status of the project?) comments as they still stand. In that regard, it doesn't matter whether they were written in July or last century: they're still here, now. Oh, and thanks for the signature tip (which I did not know), I'll try it now: cfh 02:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I started this thread in the first place in order to explain my edits of Dbachmann's contributions, trying to make it comply with the npov to the best of my knowledge. Basically, these edits still persist in the current revision of the article. I have badly chosen the title of this since it directly answers Dbachmann's comment to his 6th edit from 2005-07-06. -- j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 09:56, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] suggestions

1. I'm not sure about the samples, which just appear as garbage to most people. I say, show a nice image, describe the encoding efforts, but wait with actual samples until there is an official unicode block.
2. The section about Jackson's movie imho should go to an article that actually discusses Jackson's movies. This article cannot cover use of Tengwar outside Tolkien's works, which brings me to
3. this article should discuss use of Tengwar by Tolkien, especially early examples. i.e. it should list known documents. The lonely mountain jar is a start, then there is the Numenorean text, and the various pages facsimiled in HoME. The obscure documents (the Gothic mode etc.) should also be mentioned, if their existence is at all substantiated.

dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 10:15 (UTC)

1. I like the samples. I prefer keeping them, though reducing the first one and adding a nice image version.
2. I guess that at the movie's article, they might consider moving that part here. I support the point that the non-Tolkienian tengwar use cannot be discussed, yet I think the movie is the one admittable exception.
3. Ultimately, this is questioning the Mellonath Daeron Index of Tengwar Specimina (DTS), the one authority of counting published tengwar samples. Rivalling with them would not contribute to, but keep from having an unequivocal list of the tengwar samples. -- j. 'mach' wust ^{ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x} 7 July 2005 10:48 (UTC)

excellent! I hadn't seen the link (*blush*). In this case, we will discuss the most notable of these 64 samples. There is nothing to keep us from discussing all of them, mind you, of course referring to them as our authority. cheers, dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 10:54 (UTC)

Sorry, I reverted before seeing this discussion. Please remove again the first sample if you prefer, but I'd like to mantain it. GhePeU 7 July 2005 12:07 (UTC)

ok, but you do realize how this looks to people without the font? like this:

6E1zTjL 5^(º j#¸ 9t&5# w`Vb%_ 6EO w6Y5 e7~V 2{( zèVj# 5% 2x%51T`Û 2{( 7v%1+º 4hR 7EO 2 
{$yYO2 y4% 7]F85^ 2{( z5^8i`B5$i( 2{( dyYj2 zE1 1`N ]Fa 4^(6 5% `C 8q7T1T W w74^(69~N2º 
 6E1zTjL 1é`Nº r$(7`Û5^( 8% 1[R1TjL2 1`N j#¸ @ 7v%1+ 2{( e7~V2t^_ 81R e6Y3 5% 48% 
2zRj7E1E`B5^¹ y4%yY1 28%1z[T1`B5^ W 5#`Û z2{%¹ 8aU 8# 7iE(¹ zj^yY6¹ 8zR|¹ jx{#`Mx#(¹ 
7j$x%`B5^¹ qj^1TzTj# 7Y 4^(6 qY5%`B5^¹ 51E`B5^j# 6Y 8iY`Bj# 7Yx%5%¹ q7qY6R1`Û¹ w6T3 7Y 
4^(6 811E8&º e6U4(6t6YO¹ 5`N 28%1z[T1`B5^ dj#¸ w`V t2#( 5^ @ w8#8% W" qj^1TzTj#¹ 
s7U8%2zT1`B5^j# 7Y 1[T6R51E`B5^j# 811E8& W" zyY1[7`Û 6Y 17R'1T7Y`Û 1`N oaT `C q6R85^ 
wj$b^_¹ o4$(6 1T w`V 2{%qR2{$1[R¹ 178&1¹ 55^Â8j$eÂxr^6R5b% 7Y 2{&(67 5#`Û 4^(6 
jt%1T1E`B5^ W 8r^7RhRx51`Ûº

if you do have the fonts, you'd hardly need to be told what tengwar looks like, and if you have both fonts, you just see the same text twice. So I really don't quite se e the point... dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 12:15 (UTC)

also note that ttf fonts are not obvious for all systems. For my platform, I'd have to go through some conversion process. Why not just take a snapshot of the text, or better yet, a small sample of each font so they can be compared at a glance? dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 12:19 (UTC)

[edit] history

look, you cannot just "remove non-tengwar" from the History section. The point of the section is to trace the development of the script, so it will naturally also discuss proto-forms. dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 13:40 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I thought they accidently slipped in. However, it does not make sense to mention only these two rather very insignificant samples since there are many more. -- j. 'mach' wust ^{ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x} 7 July 2005 15:24 (UTC)

hm, well, they do have a DTS number, which apparently implies they may be considered tengwar-ish. But do feel free to discuss the others! dab (ᛏ) 8 July 2005 07:59 (UTC)

The reason for their inclusion in the DTS is that until the publication of Parma Eldalamberon 14, the existence of Valmaric was not known. -- j. 'mach' wust ^{ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x} 8 July 2005 12:49 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate German Tengwar Mode

I'd like to submit my own Tengwar mode for the representation of German to the list of modes. It differs in quite a few points from the other one I've seen on the net so far. Here it is.

BTW, the existing link to a German mode appears to be broken. Oh, and Mach: /kry@s/ ;o) Qatharsis 23:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Autotransliterator

If you haven't seen it, this thing may be useful when creating pages containing Tengwar. Ojw 13:32, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

This version is perhaps more useful for those who don't speak Polish. TCC (talk) (contribs) 19:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tibetan script

The current/classical Tibetan script has no mutual correspondance of shape features and sound features. I don't know if this was the case in the old Tibetan phagspa script, which according to the theory by Gari Ledyard was the origin of the Corean hangul script, though I rather doubt it, especially while I don't see any evidence for it. ― j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 18:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] evidence that this is still the "de facto standard" in spite of Unicode?

See in fora that use tengwar, e.g. in elfscript, or at pages on tengwar, e.g. at Amanye Tenceli. ― j. 'mach' wust | ⚖ 13:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Difference between text and graphic

The bit encoded like `N ]Fa 4^(6 looks different. I haven't got the time to figure out why, so I dump it here. Shinobu 16:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)