Neo Sindarin - Tengwar

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Beleriand mode

The Beleriand mode or "full mode", uses tengwar characters to represent vowels.

There are two ways of writing in full mode, one from earlier, first age Sindarin, and one from the third age Sindarin as used in Gondor. The difference is chiefly about the sound evolution of the language.

We are going to focus on the traditional method, with ancient sounds.

First, let's take a look at the entire alphabet:

You should be able to notice a few interesting things here.

Some characters are greyed out. Mostly from column IV, where Quenya has the velar and labiovelar sounds.

These greyed out characters are indeed not used, because they are not needed. This alphabet is designed for Quenya, and Sindarin has a few phonemes less than Quenya, so a few characters are redundant.

There are 2 missing diphtongs: ae and oe. These use full tengwar symbols, so they are missing from the table.

You will probably have noticed that a few sounds seem to be repeated. Notably, /i/, /s/, and /w/. These repeated sounds are so because different symbols are used in different circumstances. Double "m" and double "n", for example, have their own symbols,  and ; and other sounds have a symbol for beginning of words or for end of words.

Diacritics are used in Beleriand mode, except they don't represent vowels. They are only used for diphtongs, length of a vowel sound, and to disambiguate certain symbols that can be hard to distinguish.

Rules

Long vowels

Long vowels are represented by a regular vowel superimposed by a long mark called andaith. In Roman alphabet, the acute accent represents a long vowel and the circumflex represents a longer vowel. In tengwar, there is no difference.

  bâd  = 
  lûth = 

Duplicated consonants

Consonants that can be doubled are l, m, n and s. The only one without a specific tengwa is l, which needs to be written twice.

  mellon = 
  lammad = 
  linnod = 
  bess   = 

Unvoiced consonants

Sindarin has two unvoiced consonants represented by rh and lh.

These sounds only occur initially. So if the pattern is found in the middle of words, it's probably result of a compound, so each letter is represented by different tengwar.

  rhûn    = 
  perhael = 

  lheweg  = 
  alhad   = 

Lisp sounds

The digraphs th and dh represent [þ] and [ð], the unvoiced and the voiced lisp sounds; they can be anywhere in the word and they each have their own tengwa. However, in Roman alphabet, -th- and -dh- may also occur medially due to compounding, but as a t or d followed by an h. When that happens, they don't represent [þ] and [ð], so the tengwar is for t or d plus h.

(This is, of course, similar to rh and lh.)

  thoron   = 
  galadh   = 
  panthael = 

Nasal sounds

Sindarin has a phoneme [ŋ] and a phoneme [ŋg] which are written in Roman alphabet as ng.

Some authors try to disambiguate by using ñ for [ŋ] and ñg for [ŋg].

[ŋ] occurs only at beginning and end of words in Sindarin, so any medial "ng" are what says on the tin.

When a consonant is preceded by a nasal sound, a line is placed above the tengwa.

  fang   = 
  ungol  = 
  thand  = 
  amben  = 

The sound of ph, f and v

In Sindarin, ph is pronounced as [f]. When f occurs at the end of a word, it's pronounced as [v]. Tolkien would eventually write stuff like "alf" instead of "alph" and "nev" instead of "nef".

  alph = 
  nef  = 

Semi-vowels

The [w] sound has a tengwa that is to be used only initial [w] sounds. Most of the times, however, [w] follows another consonant and is represented in tengwar by a tehta that looks like a spiraled bar.

  gwahae = 
  madweg = 

There is a mysterious tengwa called hwesta sindarinwa that is said to be used for voiceless w. In Roman alphabet, that is represented by wh. The phoneme is [ʍ]:

  a whend =  

In Sindarin the initial i has the sound of a consonantal y. In tengwar, a long carrier is used for this purpose, except if it's the definite article.

The definite article is often just conjoined with the next word. Tengwar doesn't have that "·" symbol used with the Roman alphabet.

  iant    = 
  i·phith =   or 

The Roman ngw is written in tengwar as a nasalised gw:

  angwedh = 

Diphtongs

Sindarin has six diphthongs: ae, oe, ai, ei, ui and au, which is transcribed -aw at the end of words.

They are written like so:

     ai - 
     ei - 
     ui - 
  au/aw - 
     ae - 
     oe - 

  sain    = 
  theinas = 
  tadui   = 
  taw     = 
  thaes   = 
  boer    = 

Although in the third age oe is always a diphthong, in classical Sindarin, the Roman "oe" also represents the umlaut version of "o", also spelled "œ". One notable word that contains that sound is arnoediad "countless". The sound "œ" is spelled like "e" in tengwar:

  arnœdiad = 

Lenited g

When [g] is lenited, it disappears. In Roman alphabet, we replace it with an apostrophe. In tengwar, we use the tengwa called gasdil.

  e·'alad = 

Marked tengwar

The tengwar representing a and i can be more clearly distinguished by marking them with a superimposed dot.

  No dot:
  ach vin aur =   

  With dot:
  ach vin aur =   

Related Topics

• Example of a full translation, including the tengwar conversion