Writing using Tengwar characters

[Rían]

drat! it didn't take - I'll try again....

ps - and good luck keeping your hands on Mr. Felagund - I think I hear SGH coming....

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
OMGoodness, which admin did you get to do that! Surely not SGH?!?!

Here's another attachment for you, Ruinel....

You will take first the price and then with-hold the promise; and I should get only death, if I told you what you ask.

[TinuvielChild]

So are you hooked yet? Will you try writing, Ruinel?

I know that's prolly not exactly as written, but I tend to de-phoneticize the words to make sense. BTW, Rian, I love your Ls. They're so pretty!

[Ruinel]

Ok, it took me a while to get the size down to under 10k (phew, that's what took me so long). But here it is (hopefully).
Edit: Yay!

[Rían]

You're exactly right, TC! and thanks

Ruinel, I'm having a terrible time reading those small letters, it must be my 44-yr-old eyes - the first few words look like "Rian traspd wrand of ruinel"

TC, you're younger can you make it out?

The attachment size is so small, you can only write a little, or you have to really shrink it down

[Linaewen]

Rian- thanks very much for your help. I have since discovered some of the answers to my questions, when I read thru all the Tengwar stuff I have, but your answers still help.

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
You're exactly right, TC! and thanks

Ruinel, I'm having a terrible time reading those small letters, it must be my 44-yr-old eyes - the first few words look like "Rian traspd wrand of ruinel"

TC, you're younger can you make it out?

The attachment size is so small, you can only write a little, or you have to really shrink it down

Oh, I was afraid of that... It says, "RÃ*an, trusted friend of Ruinel." And there's more... do you need more help? Sorry about the size. I had to bring it down so small to make the attachment limits.

[TinuvielChild]

Okay - this is what I got out of that (correct me if I'm wrong on any of it; it did get kinda squished):

Rian, trusted friend of Ruinel, and great teacher of Tengwar. I shall ever be beholden to your wisdom.

[Rían]

Great job, TC! I was really flummoxed, to use a JRRT word...

Ruinel, your 'r' (#21) character's left stem I can now see went kinda low as a decoration/serif, but I thought it was a long stem, so I read it as 't'. Also, some of your upward pointing long stems I thought were short stems, so I misread them, too (I read your 'f' as a 'w'). I couldn't make out some of your vowels, either, due to squishiness from shrinking it down, so that didn't help...Good thing TC is clever

Unfortunately, it's hard to get a decent attachment of anything more than a few words. I found the best way is to write only on one half of an 8.5 x 11 sheet, then it's not too bad when it gets reduced.

Also, just FYI, many of us here like using character 25 for the 'r', not the character 21, just because it gives kind of a different look from the basic characters 1 - 24, which are variants of up/down stem, long/short stem, and open/close bow. However, that's up to you, of course - and that's also one of the fun things about Tengwar - it's very individual. We usually have no problems reading each other's writing, even tho we use different styles (I recently converted to writing 's' as #29 more often than as #30). JRRT himself wrote 'you' several different ways. One of our favorite looking words is 'are' - written as 'a' tehta over #25 'r' tengwa with silent-'e' mark underneath the 'r'. Some words just turn out really pretty looking, while others are more plain.

Anyway, it looks like you're picking it up really well Do you like writing it?

[Linaewen]

Oh bother. I just wrote out my very long post, and now it's been deleted. I'll just write it out again:

Today I spent much of the day learning Tengwar. I've picked up most of it- the only problem is remembering all the characters (I remember all the s-curls and silent-e dots etc). I think I've done pretty well, considering I only really started today.
I attempted to read the LotR title page Tengwar, but it was hard because all the characters are a bit squished up together. The Silm was much easier, but I got confused with the i's and e's of it, until I consulted my notes, which said that Christopher Tolkien changed the tehtar for these around. (Why, oh why? I thought I couldn't spell 'first' properly when I read it)

I tried to read your message to Rian, Ruinel, but it was a bit difficult for me. My eyes are screwed- I can't distinguish between all of the vowel tehtar. Sorry. I could get 'Rian' though, probably because it's in her avatar!

I'm attaching a pic of my Tengwar I did today of my Atani name. I hope it is correct. I will attach my real name in the next post. ( I don't know how to use the image attachment thing so I can't do more than one) I apologise for the poor quality- Windows Paint is hard to work with.

[Linaewen]

My real name:
(Sorry for the crappiness - I don't have a scanner. My handwriting looks much nicer)

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by TinuvielChild
Okay - this is what I got out of that (correct me if I'm wrong on any of it; it did get kinda squished):

That is correct!!! Sorry for the way it looked. Should I use a thicker pen? Or should I write in a smaller space so that the message doesn't need to be squished so much? This was written on about 1/3 of an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper. Give me suggestions.

My eyes are just fine. Although I am quite farsighted, I can also see up close just as well (this is in real life, folks ... not just me being an Elf this time).

[Rían]

Great job, Linaewen, esp. for Paint (why oh why isn't it easier to do attachments!!)

The first attachment looks great! Don't you just love the 'a' tehta?

In the second attachment, I would say you definitely don't need the first vowel carrier - the 'i' tehta should go over the following 'n' tengwa. The second carrier is iffy, because you indicated the vowel was long by using the long carrier (and you can't indicate a long vowel by doubling the tehta as you can with 'e', 'o' and 'u') but I usually don't use a carrier unless I absolutely have to, just cause I don't like the way they look. Are you using the long 'i' for the 'ae' sound in Linaewen? Also you could just write both the 'a' and the 'e' - the 'a' would be on a carrier, and the 'e' would be over the 'w'. Just some ideas for you to think about...

Pretty impressive for just 1 day, tho And yes, CRRT switched the 'e' and 'i' around - kinda confusing at first, I don't know why he did it, except maybe so the 'e' would match the silent-e dot?? CRRT also uses some other special characters - the best thing is to go to the Tengwar examples links I posted a page or so back. It will also help you with the LoTR title page, which is rather hard because JRRT didn't use spaces between words!! It starts out "of westmarch by jhon ronald reuel tolkien" (note he writes 'john' as 'jhon', I guess that's how he thought it was phonetically).

Keep at it, and have fun

[Rían]

Ruinel, prob. just increase your horizontal spacing between tengwar, and vertical spacing between tehtar and tengwar. Also make long stems longer, maybe. Irritating attachments!!

[Rían]

Here's something else to read, esp. for Ruinel and Linaewen

[Rían]

(well, HERE ... drat the attachment thingo!)


ps - TC, have you tried writing at a slant? I've been doing that recently and I like it.

[Ruinel]

Thanks, here's my reply.

[Rían]

Im glad to I join sa well - I'm glad, too, I joined as well

That's much clearer, and very good! Finrod must be proud (I'd put the 'a' on TOP of the 's', tho, if you meant 'as')

Go you!!

TC and I sometimes write 'as' as 'az', because the 'z' is such fun! (and it's phonetic).

Yay us!

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by RÃ*an


That's much clearer, and very good! Finrod must be proud (I'd put the 'a' on TOP of the 's', tho, if you meant 'as')

Yes... I see. I couldn't fit the 'a' above the 's' so I put it below thinking that it was ok to do so.
Finrod is always proud of me, whatever I do.

[Rían]