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I was wondering aobut that too.. Perhaps it was a rudimentary differentiation between 'a' and 'ä' (as I mentioned somewhere above I used '^' for 'ä'), but I'm not sure.
Perhaps jallan would know!
Lantarion:
That's certainly possible, but maybe its an either/or type thing. When I was reading english sentences written in tengwar form later on in the book, everyone used one and not the other. By the way jallan, great book! Also, some of the vowels used the same tengwar as consonants. Would you know if someone was using a vowel or a consonant by the context?
What do you mean?
The only simliarities between tengwar and tehtar I can see are:
'Full' vowel "e" = yanta [Qu.: (consonantal) y; W/BS: i; S: e]
'Full' vowel "u" = úre [Qu.: -u; W/BS and S: u]
But those two 'tengwar' just mentioned above aren't actually consonants, except for yanta.
(The tehta for "e" looks like a 'shortened' tengwa halla, "h" (which looks like the Greek letter lambda). Perhaps that's what you meant?
Originally posted by Lantarion What do you mean?
The only simliarities between tengwar and tehtar I can see are:
'Full' vowel "e" = yanta [Qu.: (consonantal) y; W/BS: i; S: e]
'Full' vowel "u" = úre [Qu.: -u; W/BS and S: u]
But those two 'tengwar' just mentioned above aren't actually consonants, except for yanta.
(The tehta for "e" looks like a 'shortened' tengwa halla, "h" (which looks like the Greek letter lambda). Perhaps that's what you meant?
Halla is a "tall" telco or stem. Yanta looks like a short Hyarmen.
The use of tengwar for vowel sounds is prevalent in the Beleriand mode of the Sindarin tengwar usage.
In normal Sindarin mode and Quenya mode the tehtar are used for vowel sounds.
Whats the difference between tehtar and tengwar (sorry, just starting to learn)? But when it says the value of the vowel tengwa, it matches the previous part of the charts, but only for sindarin and not quenya. And with the two tengwar for "a," one isnt even on the previous part of the chart and the other (even the sindarin value) didn't match the vowel at the bottom of the chart. Didn't quite understand your response.
Sorry Bane; the tengwar are the actual characters in the table: which are all consonants.
The tehtar are the vowel symbols placed above the consonants.
Originally posted by Morgoth"sBane
But when it says the value of the vowel tengwa, it matches the previous part of the charts, but only for sindarin and not quenya. And with the two tengwar for "a," one isnt even on the previous part of the chart and the other (even the sindarin value) didn't match the vowel at the bottom of the chart.
But there's a 'W' letter in the Tengwar. I think it's called Vala. You could just put the ~ nasalation symbol above it to show an 'N' before it. But I guess you could do it your way too... Iduno, I might be wrong.
And the tehtar don't go above the letter that they're after. If you were writing 'Man' you'd put the 'M' symbol then the 'N' symbol with an 'A' tehtar over it.
Sry. What I meant by prev. chart was the main part of the chart. There is a smaller section for vowels and teir full mode forms at the bottom. What I was saying was that..hmmm...how to put it?
For example, lets take the tengwa that you would use to write the letter "e" in full mode. If you look to the main part of the chart, yanta's sindarin value is "e", which matches the vowel part of the chart. But the Quenya value is different. Therefore, how would u write full mode in quenya? Also, there are two full-mode tengwar for the letter "a" one looks sort of like the english letter "c." the other is identical to the tengwa "vilya," but even in its sindarin valure, vilya transliterates to the letter "w," not "a." Bad explanation sry.
Originally posted by BlackCaptain
But there's a 'W' letter in the Tengwar. I think it's called Vala. You could just put the ~ nasalation symbol above it to show an 'N' before it. But I guess you could do it your way too... Iduno, I might be wrong.
And the tehtar don't go above the letter that they're after. If you were writing 'Man' you'd put the 'M' symbol then the 'N' symbol with an 'A' tehtar over it.
The tengwa Vala has the value of 'v' in Quenya, and 'w' in "English".
And actually, you're wrong: Quenya and Sindarin are both written like I described the word 'manwë'. Only Black Speech/Westron is written how you descibed it. You were correct that 'man' would be written with the tehta above the 'n'; but 'Manwë' is a Quenya word, and so should be written as Quenya words are.
bane, I se what you mean now.
The full tehta for 'a' that looks like a 'C' is the only correct form that I know of. The second one must either be a weird value for 'Ä', or was one of the values that Tolkien juggled before deciding to use the 'C'.
The full valued tehtar are always the same, in all forms/languages of writing. It's true that yanta and the full tehta 'e' are the same: but when writing Quenya one very seldom uses the full tehtar, because the script iself is very concise, and each letter has its place (this is because the tehtar are palced above the consonant immediately behind them).
I c. Thx Lant. But say for some bizzarre reason you were writing with the full tehtar in Quenya, and you had "e" b4 whatever consonant yanta is in Qu., then u would have 2 of the same letter because the full tehtar are always the same?
Thats an interesting coincedence. Perhaps Tolkien was a seer and predicted that we would be having this conversation and formulated the language just so that in the situation I described would occur.
Unfortunately the w sound represented by vala is in a series whose nasal is the 'm' sound so using the nasal symbol would not work.
Also I think Manwë would be pronounced with an 'eh' at the end not 'ay', not a dipthong, so just a short e sound would go after the w sound.
Originally posted by Morgoth"sBane I c. Thx Lant. But say for some bizzarre reason you were writing with the full tehtar in Quenya, and you had "e" b4 whatever consonant yanta is in Qu., then u would have 2 of the same letter because the full tehtar are always the same?
I think that if you were writing Quenya mode then that would never happen because yanta is only used for consonental y and there is no tengwa for the e sound used in that mode. The tecco or tixe tehta is used.
Likewise if you are using the SindarinBeleriand mode where yanta is used for 'e' then you would use silme nuquerna for 'y' sounds.
Well I actualy have a question... Does the tehtar go above the tengwa that is before it? Like if I was writing 'Man' in the tengwar would I put the M symbol, then the N symbol with an A tehtar above it? Or would it be an M with an A tehtar symbol above it, then the N. I always thought that it was the first way, but I could be wrong. Can they be used interchangably?
It depends what language you are speaking in.
If you want to write Quenya or Sindarin where words are predominantly ended with a vowel sound then the rule was that the following tehta goes above the tengwa.
If you are writing in English where most words end in consonental sounds then the preceding vowel sound tehta goes above the tengwa.
For Quenya, an a-tehta (for example) goes above the preceding tengwa (if available) -- for Sindarin this same tehta goes above the following tengwa (though there is more than one mode anyway, for example the 'full' mode on the Doors of Moria).