Tengwar Tengwar

Origin
J.R.R. Tolkien created many languages throughout his life. He wrote in one of his letters that the
tales of Middle-earth (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, etc) grew from these
languages, rather than the languages being created for use in the stories.

Tolkien also created a number of different alphabets to write his languages - Tengwar, or
Feanorian letters, is the one which appears most frequently in his work. The way the vowels are
indicated in Tengwar resembles Tibetan and other Brahmi-derived scripts.

Notable features
Written from left to right in horizontal lines.
Tengwar is written is a number of different ways known as "modes". For example there is a
Quenya mode, a Sindarin mode and even an English mode. The phonetic values of the
consonants (tengwa) and the ways vowels are indicated varies from mode to mode.
Vowels are indicated by diacritics (tehtar) which appear above the consonant which precedes
them (in Quenya mode) or above the consonant which follows them (in Sindarin mode). When
vowels stand on their own or come at the beginning of a word, the diacritics appear over a
special vowel holder. Long vowels are always attached to a vowel holder.
Consonants are doubled by adding a wavy line below them.
When followed by a vowel, the letters /s/ /ss/ and /r/ are written with the tengwa silme nuquerna,
esse nuquerna and rmen respectively. Otherwise these letters are written with the the tengwa
silme, esse and re.
When the letter /s/ follows another consonant it is written with a little downward hook.
Used to write
A number of different languages of Middle-Earth, such as:

Quenya, Qenya or High-Elven, the most prominent language of the Amanya branch of the Elvish
language family. Tolkien complied the "Qenya Lexicon", his first list of Elvish words, in 1915 at

the age of 23 and continued to refine the language throughout his life. It is based mainly on
Finnish, but also partly on Greek and partly on Latin.

Sindarin, the language of the Grey-elves or Sindar. Tolkien based Sindarin on Welsh and
originally called it gnomish.

Sylvan, Westron, etc

Tengwar can also be used to write English, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swedish, Polish,
Esperanto and a variety of other languages.

Quenya mode
Consonants
Quenya consonants

Sindarin mode
Consonants
Sindarin consonants

Vowels (same for Quenya and Sindarin modes)

Quenya vowels

Vowel placement
Illustration of how Tengwar vowels are placed in Quenya and Sindarin modes

Extra Tengwar

These letters are used for Tolkien's other languages, such as Black Speech, and also in English
mode.

Extra Tengwar for Black Speech and other modes

Punctuation marks
Tengwar punctuation marks

Numerals
Tengwar numerals

Tengwar numerals are written from right to left.

Pronunciation of Quenya
Pronunciation of Quenya

Quenya pronounciation provided by Joshua Boniface

Sample text (Quenya)

Sample Quenya text in the Tengwar alphabet

Transliteration / Translation
Elen sla lumenn' omentielvo / A star shines on the hour of our meeting

Sample text (Sindarin, Beleriand mode)

Sample Sindarin text in the Tengwar alphabet

Transliteration
Ennyn Durin aran Moria: pedo mellon a minno!
Im Narvi hain echant. Celebrimbor o Eregion teithant i thiw hin.

Translation
Gate of Durin, King of Moria, say friend and enter!
I, Narvi made them. Celebrimbor of Eregion drew these signs.
(inscription on the Gate of Moria)