PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU CAN’T READ THE TENGWAR IN THIS LESSON, OTHER THAN THE CHARTS, CLICK HERE: Tengwar II Lesson.

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU CAN’T READ THE TENGWAR IN THIS LESSON, OTHER THAN THE CHARTS, AND DON’T HAVE DAN SMITH’S FONTS INSTALLED YET, CLICK HERE FOR A PDF VERSION: Tengwar II Lesson.

As you might remember from Lesson One, the Mode of Beleriand was a full mode used to write Sindarin. It’s likely that the exiled Noldor of Middle Earth were the creators of this mode, and we know that this mode was in widespread use among the Elves of Middle Earth in the Second Age, as well as the Third.

a. Reading & Writing the Mode

If you remember from the last lesson, this mode uses letters to represent both consonants and vowels, and as such, is easy enough to read. All you need to do is memorise the sound that each tengwa (letter) represents. There are also a few symbols where the function must be known (which will be explained below).

Consonants and Vowels:

· quesse, ungwe, hwesta, unque: some people have guessed that the sound values for these tengwar in this mode would be KW, GW, KHW/HW and GHW/W respectively. However, it was most likely for a W following a consonant to be written with the W-tilde instead.

.vilya was most likely used between vowels or at the end of a word; e.g. 1]n]7 ‘tawar; wood’, 1lRn ‘têw; letter’. To write a W sound following a consonant, the over-twist was used. (see ‘Miscellaneous Symbols’)

. long carrier: since this tengwa has no obvious use in this mode, many people have used it to represent the initial I that is pronounced with a consonantal Y sound (when the I is followed by a vowel); e.g. ~]ln ‘iaew; scorn’, ~]R3 ‘iâth; fence’, ~.Õ3]T3h6 ‘iuithathon; I will use/employ’

· lúva usually doesn’t appear by itself in other modes except this one, where it represents the vowel sound A.

Diphthongs:

The diphthongs AE and OE were written out with two tengwar (letters) instead of a tengwa and a tehta (vowel-mark). Other diphthongs could be written out with two letters also, but the usual method was to use the tengwa-tehtar combination whenever possible; e.g. `B e7 j3]T5l6 6]T `B 7 ‘i fair leithannen na i raw; the mortal was set free by the lion’.

Miscellaneous Symbols:

NOTE: The nasal bar isn’t used in loose-compound words (often words linked by a hyphen);
e.g. q]Tj]T62`V7`Blj ‘palan-díriel; having gazed afar’.

NOTE: this symbol … U is an alternative symbol that can be used in writing the “following W”.

Punctuation:

· The question mark, the exclamation mark, and the parenthesis have not been found in any attested samples for this mode, but have been used based on their existence in other Sindarin modes.

RULES:

1.) A bar is placed over the following letter to represent a nasal consonant cluster (a letter combination starting with N or M, like ND, NG, or MB);
e.g. 2]Tw{l3 ‘dambeth; answer’.

2.) The consonant cluster NG is represented by a nasal bar over angwa tengwa (s{) when it occurs in the middle of words, and by noldo tengwa (g) when it occurs at the start and end of words; e.g. `B g.7.3h8 ‘i nguruthos; the death-shadow’, or another,
e.g. 6`Bs{jh7 ‘ninglor; golden water-flower’.

3.) In Roman orthography (i.e. the way we write Sindarin), a final V sound is represented with the letter F. However, Tengwar is more forward in that we always use ampa tengwa (r) to write the V sound, and formen tengwa (e) to write the F/PH sound (PH is pronounced the same as F);
e.g. shjr ‘golf; branch’, e`B7`Bl3 ‘firieth; mortal woman’, ]Tje ‘alph; swan’.

4.) By the Third Age, the spirant M sound (written as MH) was pronounced as an ordinary V, but it seems that óre tengwa with a curl (y+), which represented the spirant M sound, was used, even if it was pronounced V. Our one attested example of this is in the King’s Letter, where, even though “M” is a slightly different tengwa than in the Moria inscription, it is definitely M, not V, being used to show the sound ….. šljji6 ‘mhellyn; friends’.

5.) The long carrier (~) is often used by some to represent the initial consonantal Y sound that occurs in Sindarin
e.g. ~]ln ‘iaew; scorn’, ~]r]8 ‘iavas; autumn’, ~.Õ3]T3h6 ‘iuithathon; I will use/employ’. (If you can’t remember this particular sound occuring in Sindarin, refer back to Gildor’s Sindarin Course, Lesson One.)

6.) Double consonants were usually written twice as required; the exceptions to this rule were MM, NN and SS, which were written with malta tengwa (t), númen tengwa (5), and esse tengwa (k)respectively; e.g. wljj]T8 ‘bellas; bodily strength’, w]Tk ‘bass; bread’.

7.) Long vowels (written by us with an acute accent or circumflex) are represented with an andatehta (‘long-mark’) over the appropriate vowel.
e.g. u.R6l6 ‘rhúnen; eastern’, 2.R7 ‘dûr; dark’.

TIPS:

1.) A dot is usually placed over the A-tengwa and I-tengwa to keep people from confusing them with other letters, but using the dot isn’t always necessary;
e.g. 27`Bs{]T5l6 ‘dringannen; I beat’. The dot almost never appears when writing diphthongs.

2.) Be carefeul to write Sindarin exactly as it’s pronounced; e.g. Edhelharn ‘elf-stone’ is not written l4lm]76 (i.e. it’s not written with the alda tengwa, which represents the sound LH), but rather l4lj9]76 with the L and H sounds represented separately. Why? Because edhelharn is a compound word which is made up of edhel ‘elf’ and lenited sarn ‘stone’, and in any case, the sound LH never occurs in the middle of a word – it’s hard enough to pronounce naturally at the start!

3.) When transcribing hyphenated words, always leave the hyphen out! However, it’s your choice whether you’d like to write the two words (separated by the former hyphen) together or separately, depending on how important they are to each other.

4.) About lenited G in Sindarin; as you know, when a word starting with G is lenited, the G disappears and we mark the disappeared G with an apostrophe ( ‘ ). Evidence suggests that Tolkien came up with such a symbol for Tengwar, called a gasdil, but if it did exist, we won’t know what it looks like or its function until there are more papers published by the Tolkien Estate. Until then, treat the lenited G as if it doesn’t exist in Tengwar.

As you can see, writing in this mode is fairly easy, and isn’t too taxing on the brain. Writing a word simply requires you to use the right tengwar and put them in the right order…..

]T + 5 + .R + 6 + + 2 = ]T5.R6]Õ2

a + nn + ú + n + ai + d = annúnaid

.

q + l + 7 + `B + ]T + 5 + ]T + 3 = ql7`B]T5]T3

p + e + r + i + a + nn + a + th = periannath

And it’s as easy as that!

(One parting note; don’t try to memorise everything on your first read! It can be a lot to take in, and you should be constantly referring to the lessons when writing Tengwar (although eventually there’ll be a time when you can easily write your own Tengwar by memory). However, people will still think you’re mad };)) !!

** For a chart to help you match up your computer keyboard keys with the Tengwar letters at a glance, click here: chart. This chart is for Dan Smith’s Tengwar Sindarin Font mode.

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU CAN’T READ THE TENGWAR IN THIS LESSON, OTHER THAN THE CHARTS, CLICK HERE: Tengwar II Lesson.