Product Code Database
The Tengwar () script is an artificial script, one of several scripts created by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Within the context of Tolkien's fictional world, the Tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elvish languages Quenya and Telerin. Later a great number of Tolkien's constructed languages were written using the Tengwar, including Sindarin. Tolkien used Tengwar to write English language: most of Tolkien's Tengwar samples are actually in English.
Even closer to the Tengwar is the Valmaric script, described in Parma Eldalamberon 14, which Tolkien used from about 1922 to 1925. It features many Tengwar shapes, the inherent vowel found in some Tengwar varieties, and the tables in the samples V12 and V13 show an arrangement that is very similar to one of the primary Tengwar in the classical Quenya "mode".
In his An Introduction to Elvish, Jim Allan compared the Tengwar with the London merchant Francis Lodwick's 1686 Universal Alphabet, both on grounds of the correspondence between shape features and sound features, and of the actual letter shapes.9780905220109, Bran's Head Books. ISBN 9780905220109
The Mellonath Daeron Index of Tengwar Specimina (DTS) lists most of the known samples of Tengwar by Tolkien. There are only a few known samples predating publication of The Lord of the Rings (many of them published posthumously):
The following samples presumably predate The Lord of the Rings, but were not explicitly dated:
The plural of tengwa is tengwar, and this is the name by which Fëanor's writing system became known. Since, however, in commonly used modes, an individual tengwa was equivalent to a consonant, the term tengwa in the fiction became equivalent to "consonant sign", and the vowel signs were known as ómatehtar. By loan-translation, the Tengwar became known as tîw (singular têw) in Sindarin, when they were introduced to Beleriand. The letters of the earlier alphabet native to Sindarin were called cirth (singular certh, probably from proto=yes 'cutting', and thus semantically analogous to Quenya sarat). This term was loaned into exilic Quenya as certa, plural certar.
Similarly shaped letters reflect not only similar places of articulation, but also similar manners of articulation. In the classical Quenya mode, row 1 represents voiceless stops, row 2 voiced prenasalized stops, row 3 voiceless fricatives, row 4 voiceless prenasalized stops, row 5 nasal stops, and row 6 approximants.
These principal letters are divided into four series (témar) that correspond to the main places of articulation and into six grades (tyeller) that correspond to the main manners of articulation. Both vary among modes.
Each series is headed by the basic signs composed of a vertical stem descending below the line, and a single bow. These basic signs represent the phonation for that series. For the classical Quenya mode, they are , , and , and the series are named tincotéma, parmatéma, calmatéma, and quessetéma, respectively; téma means "series" in Quenya.
In rows of the general use, there are the following correspondences between letter shapes and manners of articulation:
In addition to these variations of the Tengwar shapes, there is yet another variation, the use of stems that are extended both above and below the line. This shape may correspond to other consonant variations required. Except for some English abbreviations, it is not used in any of the better known Tengwar modes, but it occurs in a Quenya mode where the tengwa Parma with extended stem is used for and the tengwa Calma with extended stem is used for .See Parma Eldalamberon 19 (2010), pp. 41–43. The Tengwar with raised stems sometimes occur in glyph variants that look like extended stems, as seen in the inscription of the One Ring.
An example from the parmatéma (the signs with a closed bow on the right side) in the "general use" of the Tengwar is:
In languages such as Quenya, which do not contain any voiced fricatives other than "v", the raised stem + doubled bow row is used for the common nasal+stop sequences ( nt, mp, nk, nqu). In such cases, the "w" sign in the previous paragraph is used for "v". In the mode of Beleriand, found on the door to Moria, the bottom tyellë is used for nasals (e.g., vala is used for ) and the fifth tyellë for doubled nasals (malta for ).
As Tolkien explained in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings, the tehtar for vowels resemble Latin diacritics: circumflex (î) , acute (í) , dot (i) , left curl (ı̔) , and right curl (ı̓) . Long vowels, excepting , may be indicated by doubling the signs. Some languages from which is absent or in which compared to it appears sparsely, such as the Black Speech, use left curl for ; other languages swap the signs for and .
A vowel occurring alone is drawn on the vowel carrier, which resembles dotless i (ı) for a short vowel or dotless j (ȷ) for a long vowel.
Some modes map the basic consonants to , , and (classical mode in chart at right), while others use them to represent , , and (general mode at right). The other main difference is in the fourth tyellë below, where those letters with raised stems and doubled bows can be either voiced fricatives, as in Sindarin (general mode at right), or nasalized stops, as in Quenya (classical mode).
Ómatehtar modes can vary in that the vowel stroke can be placed either on top of the consonant preceding it, as in Quenya, or on the consonant following, as in Sindarin, English, and the notorious Black Speech inscription on the One Ring.
Tolkien had used multiple modes for English, including full writing and ómatehtar alphabetic modes, phonetic full modes and phonetic ómatehtar modes known from documents published after his death.
Since there are not enough places in ISO 8859-1's 191 codepoints for all the signs used in Tengwar orthography, certain signs are included in a "Tengwar A" font which also maps its characters on ISO 8859-1, overlapping with the first font.
For each Tengwar diacritic, there are four different codepoints that are used depending on the width of the character which bears it.
Other Tengwar typefaces with this encoding include Johan Winge's Tengwar Annatar, Måns Björkman's Tengwar Parmaitë, Enrique Mombello's Tengwar Élfica or Michal Nowakowski's Tengwar Formal (note that these differ in some details).
The following sample shows the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in English, according to the traditional English orthography. It should look similar to the picture; if no Tengwar font is installed, it will appear as a jumble of characters because the corresponding ISO 8859-1 characters will appear instead.
j#¸ 9t&5# w`Vb%_ 6EO w6Y5 e7`V`V 2{( zèVj# 5% 2x%51T`Û 2{( 7v%1+- 4hR 7EO 2{$yYO2 y4% 7]F85^ 2{( z5^8I`B5$I( 2{( dyYj2 zE1 1yY6E2_ 5^( 5#4^(7 5% `C 8q7T1T W w74^(692^H --
Note: Some browsers may not display these characters properly.
The following Unicode sample (which repeats the one above) is meaningful when viewed under a typeface supporting Tengwar glyphs in the area defined in the ConScript Tengwar proposal:
⸬ ⸬
Some that support this proposal are Everson Mono, Tengwar Telcontar, Constructium, Tengwar Formal Unicode, and FreeMonoTengwar (James Kass's Code2000 and Code2001 use an older, incompatible version of the proposal). The eight “Aux” variant fonts of Kurinto (such as Kurinto Text Aux, Book Aux, Sans Aux) also support Tengwar. Kurinto
| + Tengwar letters CSUR encoding ! Name !! Image !! CSUR | Designation annotation |
| Tengwar LETTER TINCO | |
| Tengwar LETTER PARMA | |
| Tengwar LETTER CALMA | |
| Tengwar LETTER QUESSE | |
| Tengwar LETTER ANDO | |
| Tengwar LETTER UMBAR | |
| Tengwar LETTER ANGA | |
| Tengwar LETTER UNGWE | |
| Tengwar LETTER THUULE (suule) | |
| Tengwar LETTER FORMEN | |
| Tengwar LETTER HARMA (aha) | |
| Tengwar LETTER HWESTA | |
| Tengwar LETTER ANTO | |
| Tengwar LETTER AMPA | |
| Tengwar LETTER ANCA | |
| Tengwar LETTER UNQUE | |
| Tengwar LETTER NUUMEN | |
| Tengwar LETTER MALTA | |
| Tengwar LETTER NOLDO (ngoldo) | |
| Tengwar LETTER NWALME (ngwalme) | |
| Tengwar LETTER OORE | |
| Tengwar LETTER VALA | |
| Tengwar LETTER ANNA | |
| Tengwar LETTER VILYA (wilya) | |
| Tengwar LETTER ROOMEN | |
| Tengwar LETTER ARDA | |
| Tengwar LETTER LAMBE | |
| Tengwar LETTER ALDA | |
| Tengwar LETTER SILME | |
| Tengwar LETTER SILME NUQUERNA | |
| Tengwar LETTER AARE (aaze, esse) | |
| Tengwar LETTER AARE NUQUERNA (aaze n., esse n.) | |
| Tengwar LETTER HYARMEN | |
| Tengwar LETTER HWESTA SINDARINWA | |
| Tengwar LETTER YANTA | |
| Tengwar LETTER UURE | |
| Tengwar LETTER HALLA | |
| Tengwar LETTER SHORT CARRIER | |
| Tengwar LETTER LONG CARRIER |
| + Tengwar ligatures and extended letters CSUR encoding ! Name !! Image !! CSUR | Designation annotation |
| Tengwar LETTER ANNA SINDARINWA | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED THUULE | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED FORMEN | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED HARMA | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED HWESTA | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED ANTO | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED AMPA | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED ANCA | |
| Tengwar LETTER EXTENDED UNQUE | |
| Tengwar LETTER STEMLESS OORE (digit zero) | |
| Tengwar LETTER STEMLESS VALA | |
| Tengwar LETTER STEMLESS ANNA | |
| Tengwar LETTER STEMLESS VILYA (digit one) |
| + Tengwar accents CSUR encoding ! Name !! Image !! CSUR | Designation annotation |
| Tengwar SIGN THREE DOTS ABOVE | |
| Tengwar SIGN THREE DOTS BELOW | |
| Tengwar SIGN TWO DOTS ABOVE | |
| Tengwar SIGN TWO DOTS BELOW | |
| Tengwar SIGN AMATICSE (dot above) | |
| Tengwar SIGN NUNTICSE (dot below) | |
| Tengwar SIGN ACUTE (andaith, long mark) | |
| Tengwar SIGN DOUBLE ACUTE | |
| Tengwar SIGN RIGHT CURL | |
| Tengwar SIGN DOUBLE RIGHT CURL | |
| Tengwar SIGN LEFT CURL | |
| Tengwar SIGN DOUBLE LEFT CURL | |
| Tengwar SIGN NASALIZER | |
| Tengwar SIGN DOUBLER | |
| Tengwar SIGN TILDE | |
| Tengwar SIGN BREVE | |
| Tengwar PUSTA (putta, stop) | |
| Tengwar DOUBLE PUSTA (putta) | |
| Tengwar EXCLAMATION MARK | |
| Tengwar QUESTION MARK | |
| Tengwar SECTION MARK | |
| Tengwar LONG SECTION MARK | |
| Tengwar SIGN LONG CARRIER BELOW | |
| Tengwar SIGN DOUBLE ACUTE BELOW | |
| Tengwar SIGN RIGHT CURL BELOW | |
| Tengwar SIGN LEFT CURL BELOW | |
| Tengwar SIGN LEFT FOLLOWING SILME | |
| Tengwar SIGN RIGHT FOLLOWING SILME |
| + Tengwar digits CSUR encoding ! Name !! Image !! CSUR | Designation annotation |
| Tengwar LETTER STEMLESS OORE (digit zero) | |
| Tengwar LETTER STEMLESS VILYA (digit one) | |
| Tengwar DIGIT TWO | |
| Tengwar DIGIT THREE | |
| Tengwar DIGIT FOUR | |
| Tengwar DIGIT FIVE | |
| Tengwar DIGIT SIX | |
| Tengwar DIGIT SEVEN | |
| Tengwar DIGIT EIGHT | |
| Tengwar DIGIT NINE | |
| Tengwar DUODECIMAL DIGIT TEN | |
| Tengwar DUODECIMAL DIGIT ELEVEN | |
| Tengwar DECIMAL BASE MARK | |
| Tengwar DUODECIMAL BASE MARK | |
| Tengwar DUODECIMAL LEAST SIGNIFICANT DIGIT MARK |
With the exception of John Rhys-Davies, the actors playing the Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy have Tengwar tattoos of the English word nine.
Footballers such as Sergio Agüero and Fernando Torres have tattoos with their first name in Tengwar on their forearms.
|
|
