The Tengwar

The Tengwar is a system of writing which Tolkien devised. In the mythology of Middle Earth it is the writing system originally used by the elves for writing, but is later adopted by most of the peoples in the same way that the language is adopted and adapted. Tolkien puts a strong emphasis on the fact that it is a system of writing. He says

The script was not in origin an ‘alphabet’, that is, a haphazard series of letters, each with an independent value of its own, recited in a traditional order that has no reference either to their shapes or to their functions. [The Tengwar] was, rather, a system of consonantal signs, of similar shapes and style, which could be adapted at choice or convenience to represent the consonants of languages observed (or devised) by the Eldar. None of the letters had in its self a fixed value; but certain relations between them were gradually recognised.
–J. R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King, Appendix E, Section i.

showing several different modes of the Tengwar. This comes from the Wikipedia article on the Tengwar, and was created and submitted by Axuan [2014-05-24]

With this in mind I undertook to, like the Eldar, adapt this system to the English language. This presented quite a challenge, but Tolkien thoroughly described the process and so I managed to bring it to completion. Once this was complete I proceeded to use it to write. (It seems to have been done by several others, the results are shown in figure 10.1. The mode I developed was most similar to the general mode depictid in the figure.) I have written several pageswith the Tengwar and subsequently transcribed them back into the Latin system, which is the commonly used system. While doing this I observed several things.

When writing I was continuously transcribing from the Latin to the Tengwar, rather than thinking in terms of the sounds of the words and how to describe them. From this I drew two conclusions, firstly I currently think of words as collections of letters and an arbitrary shape, rather than as a collection of sounds which come together to describe a concept. Secondly learning a new system of writing would require spending much time in both reading and writing with it. However it may, if done appropriately, lead to a significantly deeper understanding of the language being written.

When reading I was again continuously transcribing, but worse, I was remembering what I had written and so was using the words on the page as anchors for memory, rather than actually reading them. This made the whole process rather uninformative, but a lot faster than reading. However it did show that I read words very largely by shape rather than by the actual letters making them up. This suggests that if our lettering represented sounds then the shape of written words could be more informative, although I expect that the effect on the ‘average’ person would be negligible. That is to say that no matter the system of writing used to describe a language the ‘average’ reader, like me, would end up intuitively memorising the shape of the words. As a side point it means that effectively learning a new system of writing requires a large amount of reading and writing. Furthermore the literature which is to be read should be written by some other (or just transcribed by them).

My conclusion from this exercise is that reinvestigating using the Tengwar to describe English could be very informative and give much insight into the language. It may, if very widely adopted, serve to re-unify the language and reduce the number of oddities and exceptions in it. However this is very unlikely and may serve better as an academic tool for etymology, as it forces the practitioners of it to distance themselves from the comfort of the Latin system and engage with the English language.

Of course a simpler alternative to spending large amounts of time using the Tengwar to discover English would just to find someone to educate me directly on the nuance of English and how that is correctly expressed with the Latin lettering.

Upon a little investigation it seems to be that what I propose is a study of the phonology of English through using the Tengwar as an orthography for it. Furthermore I propose that such a study, using any system of writing, could prove usefull for improving the internal consistancy of the language. It seems that the Tengwar has been adapted to work for English. However, it seems that it has been done mostly by fans of Middle Earth and its mythology and not by the academic comunity for the study of Language. Indeed this is what motivated me, but the actual undertaking was affected by an apreciation for language and its nuance. Moreover it helped kindle a love for the richness of language.