The
Tengwar are an artificial script created by
J. R. R. TolkienJohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
. In his
fictional universeA fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....
of
Middle-earthMiddle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
, the tengwar were invented by the
ElfIn J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Elves are one of the races that inhabit a fictional Earth, often called Middle-earth, and set in the remote past. They appear in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but their complex history is described more fully in The Silmarillion...
FëanorFëanor is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium who plays an important part in The Silmarillion. He was the eldest son of Finwë, the High King of the Noldor, and his first wife Míriel Serindë...
, and used first to write the Elven tongues:
QuenyaQuenya is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi in Quenya. The tongue actually called Quenya was in origin the speech of two clans of Elves...
,
TelerinTelerin is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is one of the many fictional language set in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth....
, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written using the tengwar, including
SindarinSindarin is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called the Eledhrim or Edhellim in Sindarin....
. Tolkien used tengwar to write
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: most of Tolkien's tengwar samples are actually in English.
Fictional history and terminology
According to
The War of the JewelsThe War of the Jewels is the 11th volume of Christopher Tolkien's series The History of Middle-earth, analysing the unpublished manuscripts of his father J. R. R...
(Appendix D to
Quendi and Eldar), Fëanor, when he created his script, introduced a change in terminology. He called a letter, i.e. a written representation of a spoken phoneme (
tengwë) a
tengwa. Previously, any letter or symbol had been called a
sarat (from
*sar "incise"). The alphabet of
Rúmil of
ValinorValinor is a fictional location in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the realm of the Valar in Aman. It was also known as the Undying Lands, along with Tol Eressëa and the outliers of Aman. This is something of a misnomer; only immortal beings were allowed to reside there, but the land itself,...
, on which Fëanor supposedly based his own work, was known as
saratiSarati is an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Tolkien's mythology, the Sarati alphabet was invented by the Elf Rúmil of Tirion.- External history :...
. It later became known as "Tengwar of Rúmil". The plural of
tengwa was
tengwar, and this is the name by which Fëanor's system became known. Since, however, in commonly used modes, an individual
tengwa was equivalent to a consonant, the term
tengwar in popular use 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
cirthThe Cirth are the letters of an semi-artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S....
(singular
certh, probably from
*kirte "cutting", and thus semantically analogous to, and
cognateIn linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
with, Quenya
sarat). This term was loaned into exilic Quenya as
certa, plural
certar.
Precursors
The
saratiSarati is an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Tolkien's mythology, the Sarati alphabet was invented by the Elf Rúmil of Tirion.- External history :...
, described in
Parma Eldalamberon 13, a script developed by J. R. R. Tolkien in the late 1910s, anticipates many features of the tengwar, especially the vowel representation by
diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s (which is found in many tengwar varieties), different tengwar shapes and a few correspondences between sound features and letter shape features (though inconsistent).
Even closer to the tengwar is the Valmaric script, described in
Parma Eldalamberon 14, which J. R. R. Tolkien used from about 1922 to 1925. It features many tengwar shapes, the inherent vowel [a] 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".
Jim Allan (
An introduction to Elvish, ISBN 0-905220-10-2) compared the tengwar with the
Universal Alphabet of
Francis LodwickFrancis Lodwick was a pioneer of a priori languages . He was a merchant of Dutch origin who lived in London...
of 1686, both on grounds of the correspondence between shape features and sound features, and of the actual letter shapes.
Tengwar
The tengwar were probably developed in the late 1920s or in the early 1930s.
The Lonely Mountain Jar Inscription, the first published tengwar sample, dates to 1937 (
The HobbitThe Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...
, most editions). The full explanation of the tengwar was published in Appendix E of
The Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
in 1955.
The
Mellonath Daeron Index of Tengwar Specimina (DTS) lists 74 known samples of tengwar by Tolkien.
There are only few known samples predating publication of
The Lord of the Rings (many of them published posthumously):
- DTS 1 – The Lonely Mountain Jar Inscription, published 1937
- DTS 13 – Middle Page from the Book of Mazarbul
- DTS 14 – Last Page from the Book of Mazarbul, Last Line, this and the above one originally prepared for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings
- DTS 15 – Steinborg Drawing Title
- DTS 22 – Ilbereth's Greeting from The Father Christmas Letters
The Father Christmas Letters is a collection of letters written and illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien between 1920 and 1942 for his children, from "Father Christmas"...
, dating to 1937
- DTS 24 – The Treebeard Page
- DTS 50/51 – Edwin Lowdham's Manuscript from The Notion Club Papers
The Notion Club Papers is the title of an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated, the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth. It is a space/time/dream travel story, written at the same time as The Lord of the Rings was being developed...
has Old English languageOld English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
text written in tengwar (with a few AdûnaicAdûnaic is a fictional language in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien.One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, it was spoken by the Men of Númenor during the Second Age.-Fictional history:...
and Quenya words), dating to 1945/6.
- DTS 10 – The Brogan Tengwa-greetings, appearing in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien...
, No. 118, tentatively dated to 1948.
- The following samples presumably predate the Lord of the Rings, but they were not explicitly dated: DTS 16, DTS 17, DTS 18 – Elvish Script Sample I, II, III, with parts of the English poems Errantry and Bombadil, first published in the Silmarillion Calendar 1978, later in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, as well as DTS 23 – So Lúthien, a page of the English Lay of Leithan text facsimiled in The Lays of Beleriand
The Lays of Beleriand, published in 1985, is the third volume of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume book series, The History of Middle-earth, in which he analyzes the unpublished manuscripts of his father J. R. R...
:299.
A few other samples, e.g. a tengwar mode for
GothicGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
are known to exist, but remain unpublished to date
.
Description
Letters
The most notable characteristic of the tengwar script is that the shapes of the letters correspond to the
distinctive featureIn linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory.Distinctive features are grouped into categories according to the natural classes of segments they describe: major class features, laryngeal features, manner features,...
s of the sounds they represent.
Regularly formed letters
Most letters are constructed by a combination of two basic shapes: a vertical
stem (either long or short) and either one or two rounded
bows (which may or may not be underscored, and may be on the left or right of the stem).
These principal letters are divided into four series ("témar") that correspond to the main
places of articulationIn articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
and into six rows ("tyeller") that correspond to the main
manners of articulationIn linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants, even though the movement of the articulars will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the...
. 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
voicePhonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...
less
stop consonantIn phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
s for that series. For the classical Quenya mode, they are /t/, /p/, /k/ and /kʷ/, 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:
- Doubling the bow turns the voiceless consonant
Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...
into a voiced one.
- Raising the stem above the line turns it into the corresponding fricative
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
.
- Shortening it (so it is only the height of the bow) creates the corresponding nasal
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
. It must be noted though that in most modes, the signs with shortened stem and single bow do not correspond to the voicelessPhonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...
nasalA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s, but to the approximants.
Here is an example from the
parmatéma (the signs with a closed bow on the right side) in the general use:
- The basic sign, named parma, (with descending stem) represents /p/ (it happens to look much like the Latin letter P).
- With the bow doubled, umbar, it represents /b/.
- With a raised stem, formen, it represents /f/.
- With a raised stem and a doubled bow, ampa, it represents either /v/ or /mp/ (depending upon the language).
- With a short stem and double bow, malta, it represents /m/.
- With short stem and single bow, vala, it represents /w/ (or /v/, if the symbol above is used for /mp/; in such cases, /w/ is represented by vilya in the quessetéma).
In some languages such as Quenya, which do not contain any voiced fricatives other than "v", the raised stem + doubled bow row is used for the very common nasalized stops (
nt,
mp). In such cases, the "w" sign in the previous paragraph is used for "v". In the mode of Beleriand, found on the door to
MoriaIn the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria was the name given by the Eldar to an enormous underground complex in north-western Middle-earth, comprising a vast network of tunnels, chambers, mines and huge halls or 'mansions', that ran under and ultimately through the Misty Mountains...
, the bottom
tyelle is used for nasals (i.e.,
vala is used for /m/) and the fifth
tyelle for doubled nasals (
malta for /mm/).
Irregularly formed letters
There are additional letters that do not have regular shapes. They may represent, e.g., /r/, /l/, /s/ and /h/. Their use varies considerably from mode to mode. Some aficionados have added more letters not found in Tolkien's writings for use in their modes.
Tehtar
A
tehta (Quenya "marking") is a
diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
placed above or below the tengwa. They can represent vowels, consonant doubling, or nasal sound.
As Tolkien explained in the
ROTK appendix, the
tehtar for vowels resemble Latin diacritics: circumflex (î) /a/, acute (í) /e/, dot (i) /i/, left curl ı̔ /o/, and right curl ı̓ /u/.
(Some languages without /o/, such as the Black Speech, use left curl ı̔ for /u/; other languages reverse the signs for /e/ and /i/.)
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.
Modes
Just as with any
alphabetAn alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
ic writing system, every specific language written in tengwar requires a specific
orthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
, depending on the
phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of that language. These tengwar orthographies are usually called
modes. Some modes follow pronunciation, while others follow traditional orthography.
Some modes map the basic consonants to /t/, /p/, /k/ and /kʷ/, while others use them to represent /t/, /p/, /tʃ/ and /k/.
Ómatehtar
In some modes, called
ómatehtar (or
vowel tehtar) modes, the vowels are represented with
diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s called
tehtar (Quenya for 'signs'; corresponding
singularIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
:
tehta, 'sign'). These ómatehtar modes can be loosely considered
consonant scriptsAn abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
or – in some cases –
alphasyllabariesAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
rather than true
alphabetAn alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
s.
Ómatehtar modes can vary in that the vowel stroke can be placed either on top of the consonant preceding it, as in
QuenyaQuenya is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi in Quenya. The tongue actually called Quenya was in origin the speech of two clans of Elves...
, or on the consonant following, as in
SindarinSindarin is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called the Eledhrim or Edhellim in Sindarin....
, English, and the notorious Black Speech inscription on the One Ring. The other main difference is in the fourth
tyelle below, where those letters with raised stems and doubled bows can be either voiced fricatives, as in Sindarin, or nasalized stops, as in Quenya.
Full writing
In the
full writing modes, the consonants and the vowels are represented by Tengwar. Only one such mode is well-known. It is called the "mode of
BeleriandIn J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional legendarium, Beleriand was a region in northwestern Middle-earth during the First Age. Events in Beleriand are described chiefly in his work The Silmarillion, which tells the story of the early ages of Middle-earth in a style similar to the epic hero tales of Nordic...
" and one can read it on the Doors of Dúrin.
Modes for various languages
Since the publication of the first official description of the Tengwar at the end of
The Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
, others have created modes for other languages such as
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
,
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
,
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
,
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
,
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
,
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
,
Esperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and
LojbanSee also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...
.
Tolkien has 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.
Non-Unicode
The contemporary
de factoDe facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
standard in the tengwar user community maps the tengwar characters onto the ISO 8859-1 character encoding following the example of the tengwar typefaces by Dan Smith. This implies a major flaw: If no corresponding tengwar font is installed, a
string of nonsense characters, from the Japanese 文字 "character" + 化け "change", is the occurrence of incorrect, unreadable characters shown when computer software fails to render text correctly according to its associated character encoding.-Causes:...
appears.
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 most of these differ in details).
The following sample shows the first article of the
Universal Declaration of Human RightsThe Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
written in English, according to the traditional
English orthographyEnglish orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of habits to represent speech sounds in writing. In most other languages, these habits are regular enough so that they may be called rules...
. It should look similar to the picture at the top of the page, but 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.
Unicode
A proposal has been made by
Michael EversonMichael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...
to include the tengwar in the
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
standard. The codepoints are subject to change; the range to U+0160FF in the SMP is tentatively allocated for tengwar according to the current
Unicode roadmap.
Tengwar are currently included in the unofficial
ConScript Unicode RegistryThe ConScript Unicode Registry is a volunteer project to coordinate the assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for the encoding of artificial scripts. It was founded by and is maintained by John Cowan and Michael Everson...
, which assigns codepoints in the Private Use Area. Tengwar are mapped to the range U+E000 to U+E07F; see External links.
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
typefaceIn typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
s that support this proposal are
Tengwar Telcontar,
Constructium,
Tengwar Formal Unicode, and
FreeMonoTengwar (
James Kass's
Code2000Code2000 is a pan-Unicode digital font, which includes characters and symbols from a very large range of writing systems. As of the current final version 1.171 released in 2008, Code2000 is designed and implemented by James Kass to include as much of the Unicode 5.2 standard as practical , and to...
and Code2001 use an older, incompatible version of the proposal).
⸬ ⸬
Non Middle-earth usage
Tengwar script appears in a bound volume in the
Within TemptationWithin Temptation is a Dutch symphonic gothic metal/rock band founded in 1996 by vocalist Sharon den Adel and guitarist Robert Westerholt. Their music is described as symphonic metal, although their earlier material, such as Enter, was gothic metal. In an interview, Den Adel said they fell into a...
music video for "Stand My Ground", though it appears to be a random selection of letters, with a tehta vowel appearing about every five words or so. Many tengwar are also repeated for no apparent reason.
Another instance of this stylistic use of tengwar is the computer game
Atlantis: The Lost TalesAtlantis: The Lost Tales is a fantasy adventure computer game developed by Cryo Interactive and published by Dreamcatcher Interactive, and released on September 30, 1997. The game is named after its initial and most important setting, Atlantis...
; again the tengwar are used meaninglessly. Tengwar is also used in
Alone in the DarkAlone in the Dark is the title of several works of fiction:*Alone in the Dark, a series of video games*Alone in the Dark , a 1992 video game and the first in the series...
, a comic book, as a typeface describing an arcane language.
SpanishSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
footballer
Fernando TorresFernando José Torres Sanz , nicknamed , is a Spanish footballer who plays for Chelsea and the Spain national team as a striker....
has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm that reads
"Fernando" in tengwar, as does his former Atletico Madrid team mate
Sergio AgüeroSergio Leonel "Kun" Agüero del Castillo is an Argentine footballer who plays as a striker for Manchester City in England's Premier League and the Argentine national team....
whose reads
"Kun Agüero". (Fernando's tattoo uses ómatehtar, although inconsistently, with Sindarin mode for the first two vowels, and Quenya mode for the last "o"; and also contains both the "incorrect" "r" (rómen is used instead of óre) as well as "n+(n)d" when just "(n)d" (with a nasalisation bar) would have been sufficient.
ActorAn actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s
Elijah WoodElijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...
,
Ian McKellenSir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
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Orlando BloomOrlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom is an English actor. He had his break-through roles in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and starring in 2003 as blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood...
,
Sean AstinSean Astin is an American film actor, director, voice artist, and producer better known for his film roles as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title character of Rudy, and Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In television, he appeared as Lynn McGill in the fifth season of 24...
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Dominic MonaghanDominic Bernard Patrick Luke Monaghan is an English actor. He has received international attention from playing Merry in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and for his role as Charlie Pace on the television show Lost....
, Billy Boyd,
Viggo MortensenViggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. is a Danish-American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner , Carlito's Way , Crimson Tide , Daylight , The...
, and
Sean BeanShaun Mark "Sean" Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean is best known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe...
have
tattooA tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
s of the English word
nine written in Quenya-mode tengwar. Contrary to popular belief, these tattoos do not spell out the "Elvish" (
QuenyaQuenya is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi in Quenya. The tongue actually called Quenya was in origin the speech of two clans of Elves...
or
SindarinSindarin is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called the Eledhrim or Edhellim in Sindarin....
) word for nine (Quenya
nertë or Sindarin
neder) but instead simply the letters for the English word
nine in tengwar.
John Rhys-DaviesJohn Rhys-Davies is a Welsh actor and voice actor. He is perhaps best known for playing the charismatic Arab excavator Sallah in the Indiana Jones films and the dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy...
declined the tattoo, but his dwarf body double got it in his place. They had them done after the filming of Peter Jackson's
Lord of the Rings film trilogyThe Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
, since the characters they played were the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring.
See also
- Sarati
Sarati is an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Tolkien's mythology, the Sarati alphabet was invented by the Elf Rúmil of Tirion.- External history :...
- Cirth
The Cirth are the letters of an semi-artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S....
- A Elbereth Gilthoniel
A Elbereth Gilthoniel is an Elvish hymn to Varda in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.-The Hymn:There are three versions of this hymn, the first of which being the largest portion of Sindarin found in the novel:-Musical Versions:...
- Elvish languages (Middle-earth)
- Namárië
"Namárië" is a poem by J. R. R. Tolkien written in Quenya, a constructed language, and published for the first time in The Lord of the Rings...
External links
Non-tolkienian Modes
Technical