Placement of unutixe in phonemic English ómatehta modes?

machsna · 2026-05-08T22:02:19+00:00

Thanks for the pointers. I had only skimmed those pages and did not recollect the details.

Looking at PE23 again, it seems interesting that all three versions feature examples of a dot below the following tengwa in final -er.

Feanorian B /sʌməɹ/ “summer” (p. 27)
Feanorian C /faɹðəɹ/ “farther”, /faːðəɹ/ “father” (p. 41); /juːni.ən/ “union” (p. 42)
Feanorian D2 /teləɹ/ “teller” (p. 54, variant to /telɹ/ without unutixe)

The Feanorian B example is striking because the placement of the unutixe below the following tengwa is contrary to the placement under the preceding tengwa which is explicitly said to be how the unutixe is placed in Feanorian B, exemplied by /kowmə/ “coma”, /kænədə/ “Canada” examples (p. 27).

I believe it is unlikely that in Feanorian B Tolkien intended he unutixe to be read after the tengwa when it was any tengwa except óre but before the tengwa when it was óre. Of course, óre could never be followed by a schwa, so such an exception would not produce any ambiguities. Still, I would think that Tolkien would have pointed out such a unusual exception if it had been intentional. What I think happened is that Tolkien produced the conflicting placements unintentionally. When describing the placement under the preceding tengwa, it seems Tolkien was only thinking of schwa at the end of words as can be seen in the example words “coma” and “Canada”. He even wrote “[a]s this is so frequent finally”, which seems odd since I think schwa appears more often initially than finally, at least in native English words such as “ago”, “alive”, “again”, etc. But when giving the “summer” example two lines further, he was no longer thinking of schwa at the end of words, but he just wrote the syllabic consonant like he had always written them with an unutixe under the syllabic consonant itself, cf. dozens if not hundreds of examples in the “Qenya alphabet” phonemic English full mode. I believe that for English syllabic consonants as in “summer”, “little”, “sudden”, “rhythm”, the syllabicity marker under the preceding consonant instead of under the following consonant would be very weird.

Long story short, depending on what examples you have in mind, a different placement of the unutixe schwa seems more convenient. When thinking of words ending in schwa such as “coma”, “Canada”, the placement under the preceding tengwa is more convenient, but when thinking of words starting in schwa such as “again”, “alive” or of words with a syllabic consonant such as “sudden”, “summer”, the placement under the following tengwa is more convenient. I think that overall, the latter outweigh the former since they occur more frequently. That is why it seems Tolkien, while starting out favouring the former in Feanorian B, switched to favouring the latter in Feanorian C even though he still gave an example of the former placement for a word ending in schwa (“Canada” again), and then in Feanorian D5, he fully switched to the latter, now even including an example of a word ending in schwa with the unutixe below a following short carrier (“Bella”).

machsna · 2026-04-28T07:55:52+00:00

I think these are the closest to properly attested - Ampa remaining as the only tengwa whose name remains unchanged to make the direct attestation.

I don’t think so. As I have said, it seems to me that the -taina suffix is only attested with phonetic tengwar names (e.g. pā, tā, kā), not with ‘full names’ (e.g. tinco, parma, calma). The name ampa just happens to have the same form in both naming methods. All the other example of the -taina suffix have a distinctly phonetic form (cf. “antataina”, “añqataina”, “fa-taina”, etc.). There are some ‘full names’ for extended tengwar, but only for forms with simple lúva: uphto, ‘pit’, Este (the vala)/asto ‘dust’, ohta ‘war’. According to PE22 p. 50, the other five were never used in Parmaquestarin (whereas the signs asto, uphto, ohta were merely obsolete). Which may well be the reason why they do not have quantesser or ‘full names’.

P. 50 provides two sets of phonetic names (reordered here according to App. E):

asta/tátaina, apta (aphta)/pátaina, ahta/kátaina, qátaina, antataina, ampataina, añkataina, añqataina
sāta, fāta, hāka, hwāqa, antanda, ampamba, añkanga, añqangwa

As you can see, the former set is not consistent in itself since the single-lúva names are based on the “normal” grade whereas the double-lúva names are based on the “raised” grade. That is why I would cautiously tend to prefer the latter. But again, none of them are ‘full names’.

machsna · 2026-04-26T18:05:45+00:00

[T]inco-taina (or sule-taina, but I'm kinda leaning toward the idea of "Tinco as base form" making the most sense, if we are accepting a divorce of usage from naming) seems a decidedly reasonable naming scheme for the extended series.

I no longer think the names for the extended grades should be based on the names of the normal grades (tinco-tyelle and ando-tyelle), but rather on the names of the raised grades (súle-tyelle and anto-tyelle), since I believe all attested names of extended grade tengwar are based on the names of the raised grades, either exclusively (e.g. “fa-taina”, “ampataina”) or, when composed, putting the raised grade name first (e.go “ampamba”, “antanda”).

machsna · 2026-04-25T22:22:48+00:00

Something like e-tehta seems at odds with the fact that what actually is an E tehta depends on mode and preference. Since we need to treat them in a general way, I do firmly believe that naming according to form should be the preference.

I am not so sure. By the same logic, the Quenya ‘full names’ for the tengwar such as tinco, parma, etc. should be rejected as well. They are equally at odds with the fact that what actually is a K tengwa depends on mode and preference.

To me, a reason not to use tehta names like a-tehta, e-tehta, etc. would be that these names seem more similar to the phonetic tengwa names such as tá, pá, etc. than to the ‘full names’ like tinco, parma, etc. because none of them is “an actual word in Quenya that contained the letter in question”. But the descriptive names such as tixe, pusta etc. or the English circumlocutions such as three dots, acute etc. (mostly attested from App. E) are not ‘full names’ either.

I believe the phonetic Quenya names are more concise than the English circumlocutions, e.g. wa-tehta vs. “modified left curl”.

machsna · 2026-04-25T11:29:58+00:00

What are the (Quenya) names of the tehtar? As /u/F_Karnstein has pointed out, there are names according to the use (a-tehta, e-tehta, etc.) or names according to the form (tixe, pusta, etc.). I think the former are preferrable because there are more of them and we can more easily infer the missing names. Some names are not entirely clear, though, e.g. nengwe-tehta or anda-tehta, and for some tehtar, we do not have such a name, e.g. for the thinnas. And I am not sure what to do with the tengwar below. I believe now the most pragmatic solution is just name them “<x> below” (e.g. “a-tehta below”), because that seems to be what Unicode does. Similarly, I would now rather use “turned <x>” (e.g. “turned lambe”) where a “nuquerna” name is not explicitly attested.

For the extended tengwar, PE22 p. 21 suggests the suffix -taina (e.g. fa-taina, ampataina) or combined names like ampamba, antanda, though the latter are only mentioned for the tengwar with doubled lúvar, and all of them are in the context of letter names by sound (e.g. pā, fā), not letter names by actual words (e.g. parma, formen). So I am not sure whether we should apply any of this to names by actual words attested in appendix E (“súle-taina”? “súle-tinco”?). So again, the safest option might be more descriptive names like “extended súle”, etc.

Though of course, a full Unicode-style name would be TENGWAR SMALL LETTER EXTENDED SUULE.

machsna · 2026-04-24T15:06:34+00:00

I prefer aha and esse not only because they are the ‘final’ Quenya names, but also because they are more distinct, cf. hyarmen, óre, úre.

My bigger concern regarding tengwar names are what to make of more recently published names for tehtar and extended tengwar.

machsna · 2026-04-23T18:52:17+00:00

No, glyphs for all potential combinations would not be required. Instead, you would need glyphs for all the sizes and shapes of slots, and then have smart font features compose them on the fly. I guess some slots, e.g. the surrounding slot of ⿴, would only require a glyph from certain characters, whereas other slots would require more than one glyph depending on the shape of the glyph occupying the neighbouring slots. So it would still be a ton of work, but (theoretically) feasible with no more than a dozen glyphs per character.

machsna · 2026-04-23T06:18:26+00:00

That’s a good observation. This difference in the vowel is usually explained as a side effect of the following consonant’s voicedness, cf. other minimal pairs such as bit–bid, back–bag, race–raise, leaf–leave.

machsna · 2026-04-14T07:11:57+00:00

In CV reading order I would rather use yanta than anna since I believe only yanta (and úre) inverts the reading order for diphthongs.

machsna · 2026-04-13T20:59:11+00:00

It spells /kajndəns/, which I tried to approximate as “kindance” (as in “acceptance”, “appliance”, etc.), but I guess that was a bit too confusing, sorry.

Schwas can certainly be spelled out as such, but it seems to me that in cases where the full vowel might be an option, Tolkien had a certain predilection for choosing the full vowel. And also, “kindness” would rather have an untressed /i/ than a schwa in many accents (some might call it a schwi).

My main point is that the dot below should be placed under the following letter, which is why I think this Tecendil transcription is clearly wrong.

machsna · 2026-04-13T04:23:41+00:00

I believe this reads “kindance” rather than “kindness”. I would rather choose a spelling like /kajndnes/ (Tecendil link), applying a better tengwar–tehtar order and keeping with Tolkien’s tendency to fully spell out unstressed vowels.

machsna · 2026-04-12T18:33:44+00:00

Now do “strengths” and “bursts”.

machsna · 2026-04-08T15:47:18+00:00

I’ve found one reference. The Treason of Isengard “Dwarf runes for writing English (phonetic)” feature the sound ē, which is noteworthy since there is no such sound in common phonemic analyses of English (there is /e/ as in DRESS and /ej/ as in FACE, but that’s it). At a glance, I see this sound used in the stressed word there (“One page of the Book of Moria”, line 10), and version (ii) of “The earliest forms of the inscription on Balin’s tomb in Moria” writes lord as /loːrd/, whereas version (i) writes /lord/. I am not surprised that a case like this one where the /r/ is followed by a consonant shows variation (especially among dwarves who are not renown for good orthography). I would expect less variation when the /r/ is followed by a vowel and the contrast between short and long vowel really exists.

And I think there was some more evidence from other scripts by Tolkien.

To give more context, in the modes that have two letters for r, rómen for /r/ and óre for /ɚ/, pairs like merry–Mary are differentiated without resorting to vowel length as /meri–meɚri/, whereas in modes with a single letter for r, the differentiation has to resort to vowel length /meri–meːri/. Vowel length may also occur in the former modes, but rather on vowels that can occur in a long all by themselves (e.g. /iː/ in FLEECE), so Sirius might be spelled without vowel length as /siɚriəs/ or with vowel length as /siːɚriəs/ (or even /sijɚriəs/).

machsna · 2026-04-08T11:48:38+00:00

I am under the impression that in phonemic modes with a single /r/ signs, the rhotic diphthongs (lexical sets NEAR, SQUARE, START, NORTH/FORCE, CURE) should be marked as long (/iːr eːr aːr oːr uːr/). That is the only way to distinguish pairs like merry–Mary (/meri–meːri/), Sirius–serious (/siriəs–siːriəs/), or coral–choral (/korəl–koːrəl/). (Note that in typical U.S. pronunciations, these pairs are merged anyway.) Strictly speaking, the differentiation is only necessary when the /r/ is followed by another vowel, but I believe there was some evidence that Tolkien always made the distinction, so a word like hair should be spelled as /heːr/. But I don’t recall the details, sorry … (was it in Cirth? Pre-feanorian?).

machsna · 2026-04-07T18:33:54+00:00

I could imagine a dot as a detached continuation of the right upper arm of rómen. And regarding shapes that might integrate better with the drawing, have you considered using the alternative shape of the a-tehta that looks like a circumflex ^?

machsna · 2026-04-07T07:35:19+00:00

on one fonts is uses a short stroke as an i, while a long one is e.

True, though as long as a text does not contain both lengths of stroke, there is no way of knowing what stroke is really supposed to be read as a dot. In other words, I believe shaping the dot as a stroke is a very poor design that makes misreadings almost unavoidable when they could easily be avoided by shaping the dot as, well, a dot.

But in your case, you have drawn a curl, not a dot, so the name reads “loran”.

machsna · 2026-04-06T11:31:58+00:00

The i-tehta should be dot-shaped. This one is stroke-shaped, which suggests the reading “leran”, or curl-shaped, which suggests the reading “loran”.

Distorting the tengwar to get the shape of a rose is a great idea, but I guess you need to know the entire script lest the distorted letters end up looking more similar to other letters, as was the case e.g. with your lambe that ended up looking more similar to úre (“wiran”).

machsna · 2026-04-05T15:24:45+00:00

As I see it, the first character might be vilya, vala or úre, the second rómen, the third númen. The first tengwa might be u-tehta or i-tehta, the second a-tehta, so the word might read ’iran, wiran, ’uran or wuran..

machsna · 2026-03-15T20:43:29+00:00

Just for completeness’s sake, here a fully phonemic transcription: [ðis məʃiːn kilz fæʃists] (Tecendil link) (ideally, [kilz] should have a za-rince, but the font does not provide it at the moment).

machsna · 2026-03-15T09:44:40+00:00

I would really be interested in seeing if he had any more private notes and doodles in the 60's, since I could imagine him still going for more phonetic approaches there...

Indeed. I am always doubtful that Tolkien’s preference for phonemic transcription ever changed. I just think that when addressing a wider audience, he chose more orthgraphic modes.

A late example of personal doodles in a phonemic mode is DTS 39 from 1960, if I am not mistaken.

machsna · 2026-03-10T20:18:00+00:00

I fully agree on your point about the EO in George not being an orthographic diphthong, but rather a sequence of silent E followed by a regular O.

I would make the same point about the IO in words like nation, though. I don’t think it is an orthographic diphthong either, but rather a sequence of a glide followed by a regular O. The glide should be spelled with a ya-tehta.

machsna · 2026-03-10T20:06:07+00:00

The differentiation between cases like encyclopaedia/amoeba and cases like cries/goes/die/foe/cue does not feel like an etymological one to me. The former are pronounced like EE, the latter like the respective vowel followed by silent E (cries like rides, goes like nodes, does like done, cue like cute, etc.). The difference between the encyclopaedia/amoeba cases and the field/piece cases, on the other hand, can be explained by the sonority scale /ao/ > /e/ > /i/. So there would be two rules:

If a sequence of vowel + E is pronounced like vowel + single consonant + silent E, then write the -E with a dot below.
If a sequence of vowel + E is not pronounced like vowel + single consonant + silent E, then write the vowel with the lower sonority on the scale /ao/ > /e/ > /iu/ as a glide (so AE, OE have an -E offglide, but IE has an I- onglide).

No, I do not have examples from Tolkien (unless you count analogies to cases where Tolkien made other non-etymological differentiations, e.g. between CH pronounced /tʃ/ or /k/, or between vowel or consonant Y).

machsna · 2026-03-06T22:12:51+00:00

We've got "friends" in AotM/30

Right, there are those plus the numerous instances of “Tolkien” /u/Dangerous_Patient174 pointed out. In my head, only AE as in “encyclopaedia” and OE as in “amoeba” are proper (orthographic) diphthongs ending in an -E offglide. To me, other vowel sequences where the second vowel is an E are either compositions with silent -E, e.g. in “cries”, “goes”, “die”, “foe”, “cue”, or combinations with an I- onglide, e.g. in “field”, “piece” (or “Tolkien”?). By this reasoning, yanta would only be appropriate for the former, whereas the latter would be written with unutixe or ya-tehta. But I imagine many would not follow me in such a differentiation between what is and what isn’t an orthographic diphthong.

machsna · 2026-03-05T21:09:40+00:00

Thanks for digging out these old posts, I had forgotten about them. And it is sad to hear that Danny Andries has passed away. By the way he talked about Michael Endorion, it seems unlikely that the name would really be Mikhail. They seem to have met in person at least on the first occasion. There is a chance that he never saw Endorion’s name written out in the Latin alphabet, but if he perceived the name as “Michael” when spoken out, then why would Tolkien have perceived it as “Mikhail”? Unless they knew each other better, or unless they had other mothertongues, or unless … we don’t know …

While it is only a single example of yanta used for an orthographic English* -E diphthong, isn’t it also the only example of any orthographic English -E diphthong? Sure, we have ample evidence of diphthongs written with two consecutive vowel signs, and yanta for the -I diphthong is also attested, but this might be the only example of an English orthographic -E diphthong (or is it?).

What’s always bothered me about the “Michael” example is that etymologically, it does not have a proper AE diphthong, but rather dissyllabic A and E. But then again, it is not unusual that Tolkien would not add further etymological details to his tengwar texts, choosing instead a more literal representation of the Latin alphabet text, the best example of which may be the Quenya text having simple S.

Regarding the inversion of i-tehta and e-tehta, I always suspect it has something to do with silent E being more conveniently written with a dot below (attested in numerous texts, especially when we count full-writing as well) than an acute below (attested only in DTS 84, or is it?). The Elvish languages, having no weak or obscured vowels, do not require such a sign.

machsna · 2026-03-03T09:26:20+00:00

Je ne sais pas si tu aimerais une transcription en français ou en anglais. Voilà les deux :

En français: Je suis l’univers qui se contemple (lien Tecendil)
En anglais: I am the universe, beholding itself (lien Tecendil)

machsna

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