Na'vi mode of Tengwar

[Lance R. Casey]

For no particular reason^* (apart from general geekness, of course), I did this:

Tengwar mode for Na'vi


*) But if you need one, consider that both the Elves and the Na'vi revere and live in harmony with nature, and are portrayed as noble races. And, they both have pointy ears.

[thg]

Brilliant!

[Erimeyz]

That's scary cool.

[suomichris]

Heh, I thought about doing this earlier today, but decided I couldn't bear the nerdiness--gratz to you!

I'd kind of like to see the ll/rr as a diacritic along with the rest of the vowels, but that could just be me :p

[suomichris]

Actually, hey, this could be promising!

So, as I understand it (I don't know much about Tengwar) vowels are written on either the preceding or following consonant, depending on the "mode," yes?  So, if one wrote the vowels on the following consonant, instead of on the preceding, you'd have the vowels staying in the same place when you put in the infixes, and the infix morphemes themselves often written in the same way.

(Does that make sense? It's late.  If not, I can clarify.  Tomorrow.)

[Nyx]

This is so cool! But I have some questions. First, the s-curl can't be attached to all the symbols, are you sure you can make ts like that? I would look into this myself, but I have to run, so maybe later. Second, will we be using a line above the tengwa to show a preceding n/m?

And, yes, Suomichris, it does make sense. Actually, I'd prefer the mode with the vowel on the following consonant.

[Lance R. Casey]

I'd kind of like to see the ll/rr as a diacritic along with the rest of the vowels, but that could just be me :p

I considered this for a while, but decided against it for two reasons: 1) there aren't enough (commonly occurring) tehtar, and 2) ll and rr are semivowels and also lengthened, so setting them apart has some merit.

Actually, hey, this could be promising!

So, as I understand it (I don't know much about Tengwar) vowels are written on either the preceding or following consonant, depending on the "mode," yes?  So, if one wrote the vowels on the following consonant, instead of on the preceding, you'd have the vowels staying in the same place when you put in the infixes, and the infix morphemes themselves often written in the same way.

(Does that make sense? It's late.  If not, I can clarify.  Tomorrow.)

You're right, and that's a good point I actually had not thought of. On the other hand, a similar but opposite argument can be put forth based in syllabication:

(with tehta on preceding tengwa)
ka.me, ki.va.me, ki.va.mu.ye

(with tehta on following tengwa)
k.am.e, k.iv.am.e, k.iv.am.uy.e

My reason for choosing the order that I did was that I have this feeling that vowel-final words are common in Na'vi, and especially with regard to frequent short words such as lu, sì, ke and the various adpositions; the same goes for many of the affixes. Both systems would work just fine, though.

[Erimeyz]

Not that I'm likely to ever be able to use this, but my "vote" goes for vowels-with-preceding.  It works better for most of the short words and affixes, but "worse" for the infixes...

... except that I get the feeling that the infixes aren't really "supposed" to work like the affixes, and that they don't "feel" like unitary elements.  They interrupt and alter the flow of the word, completing the first half of the interrupted syllable and initiating the second half as a new syllable.  So vowels-with-preceding actually does work better for infixes - at least, in the way I visualize them (audiolize them?) in my mind.

  - Eri

[Lance R. Casey]

This is so cool! But I have some questions. First, the s-curl can't be attached to all the symbols, are you sure you can make ts like that? I would look into this myself, but I have to run, so maybe later. Second, will we be using a line above the tengwa to show a preceding n/m?

The "s-hook" can be written in a number of ways to match the tengwa it's applied to, and I don't know of any symbols being explicitly forbidden to connect with it; Tolkien merely said that it occurred "especially in the combinations ts, ps, ks (x), that were favoured in Quenya". Since the sound values of the tengwar are dependent upon the mode employed (and the target language for this mode), I don't think I've overstepped any bounds -- other than breaking the convention of having the first grade as voiceless plosives.

As for the nasalization bar, I wouldn't think so. It's used to indicate nasalized consonants (exclusively stops or other nasals, as far as I know), which means that they are preceded by the nasal of the same series. True, there's nothing stopping us from writing a word like pängkxo or even kunsìp in that manner, but I think it's nice to have the tehtar as vowel markers only, and each consonant represented by a unique symbol.

[Sanhìyä Tirea]

This is great! I really love Lord Of The Rings. I did teach myself the tengwar mode in the Appendices of RotK at one point but I've mostly forgotten it now....

[Nyx]

snip

As for the nasalization bar, I wouldn't think so. It's used to indicate nasalized consonants (exclusively stops or other nasals, as far as I know), which means that they are preceded by the nasal of the same series. True, there's nothing stopping us from writing a word like pängkxo or even kunsìp in that manner, but I think it's nice to have the tehtar as vowel markers only, and each consonant represented by a unique symbol.

Yeah, you're right, besides, ng already has its own tengwa . I just had to ask about this because I always try writing things as short as possible with tengwar, just to annoy those of my friends who try to decipher my notes. But I guess I won't have to bother when I write in Na'vi, hehe.

Oh and about the s-hook, thanks for clarifying that. I only had a faint memory of there being something weird about it. And good choice on the plosives.

[thg]

Regarding which consonant vowels should go with, I think that the normal convention for rendering technology is to input combining characters after the base character, so it is really cumbersome to type a script with vowel marks on the following consonant -- you wind up typing them out of their pronunciation order.  There are ways to get around that, but it would involve a lot more work with fonts or input methods.

[Kiliyä]

That's fantastic.  There was someone in the Facebook group for LearnNavi who did a similar thing... anyone know who that was?  Anyhoo, great work.  +1 Karma for you.

[suomichris]

Regarding which consonant vowels should go with, I think that the normal convention for rendering technology is to input combining characters after the base character, so it is really cumbersome to type a script with vowel marks on the following consonant -- you wind up typing them out of their pronunciation order.  There are ways to get around that, but it would involve a lot more work with fonts or input methods.

Hrm, that depends.  I'm not sure how Tengwar is set up, but there isn't a reason you can't have a modifying character like a vowel diacritic placed ahead of the cursor, rather than behind it, in which case you could type in the same order.

I was actually thinking about cooking up a Na'vi script for pedagogical purposes that would clearly indicate the structure of roots and any infixes as being distinct from each other.  Would people find that useful at all?  I don't imagine that it would get heavy use, but maybe for new folks to have a way of visualizing infixation would be useful...?

[Erimeyz]

I was actually thinking about cooking up a Na'vi script for pedagogical purposes that would clearly indicate the structure of roots and any infixes as being distinct from each other.  Would people find that useful at all?  I don't imagine that it would get heavy use, but maybe for new folks to have a way of visualizing infixation would be useful...?

I don't want to discourage you if you think it's worth doing, but my first thought is that it would be extra complexity for a small benefit, and thus possibly counter-productive.

But if you've got an idea for a script that's itching to see light of day, by all means show us something, and we'll see how useful it might be!

  - Eri

[shadowcheets]

Very nice! I was meaning to do this just for the geekness factor, but had to do some more research first (while I can read and write fine for English, the ideas behind it were a little fuzzy). Kudos to you for actually having enough geekiness points to pull it off.

Looks very nice, neat, logical, and well thought out. Feels very natural. The only thing that felt a bit strange was the absence of the R-rule. Then again, it seems like sort of a tradeoff between the ore/romen consistency with the /r/ and /rr/ sounds and skipping to an arda just for a random rule.

[Eight]

Well... we've found the biggest nerd on LearnNavi.org.

(But this is too cool.)

Good job fella.

[Lance R. Casey]

Well... we've found the biggest nerd on LearnNavi.org.

Who do I need to bribe/threaten to get that in my title...?