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Tengwar Karuta - Additionals 2

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Project explanation here: [link]
Quick version: Kind of an "A is for Apple" for Quenya in Tengwar. Only more complicated. Inspired by a Japanese card game.

Last batch!

When, after the last set, I said "three Tengwar left", you may have been confused. There are after all three full rows of additional Tengwar, so after the first there should be two more, coming down to eight Tengwar.

But - not all of them are applicable.
In the second row of additionals, there are four Tengwar, but two of them are actually the same as the other, just the other way round. They're read the same way too, and named the same (except with a nuquerna tagged on, signifying "reversed"). They're just used when the un-reversed versions are impractical. (Actually they're used in the text cards, because the names of the Tengwar written as words have vowels following the letter in question.)
So that takes care of two.

Leaves the last row. That cost me a lot of thought. I actually made sentences for all of them (except for hwesta sindarinwa, which, as the name suggests, just doesn't occur in Quenya), but the problem is that you wouldn't actually use the Tengwar in question to write their names. Yanta is not actually used to write yanta, you'd take (y)anna instead - yanta is instead used for diphthongs. Same goes for úre. Both these tengwar are used for vowel sounds, not for consonants, and not even for the vowel sounds they signify by themselves, but only for their occurance in diphthongs. (Things are different in the Beleriandic mode, but we're talking Quenya here!)
If instead of hwesta sindarinwa you use halla, you again have the problem that you wouldn't write halla as a word with the halla-Tengwa, but with harma/aha instead.
Is everybody confused now? Good, because that's how I felt, too.

In the end I took the easiest road and left all questionable/un-consonantal Tengwar out. So from the last row, only hyarmen survived into the game.
I like the camel. Yes, it looks like a mule with humps, but hey, chances are that the Elves of Rivendell never actually saw a camel, only heard descriptions of them, so an approximation is just fine. Like Dürer's Rhino. Erestor's Camel. ;)

There's another Tengwa of two names in this set, and indeed it has been used for different sounds at different times. As with harma/aha, I incorporated both names into the text, one at the very beginning and one at the very end (again, hurrah for free word order).

The first Tengwa of this set reminds me of a fanfic I didn't actually read myself, only heard about, and while what I heard was kind of funny, it also made no sense whatsoever within the background of Tolkien's world - it only worked in English. It upset me terribly, even though the idea as such was nice.
It was basically (as I remember it) dealing with the Shibboleth of Fëanor. For those who missed out on the linguistic side of the feud: While most of the Noldor began to copy the Vanyar in pronouncing words that contained an interdental fricative (the "th"-sound in English) with an alveolar fricative (the "s"-sound), Fëanor insisted that it should be interdental (after all he'd invented the thúle-Tengwa just for that purpose!). This grew into a real argument, and because Fëanor was being a wee bit irrational, he didn't have as many supporters as he would've liked even though his point as such was valid (or so the chronicler says). In the House of Fëanor, the interdental fricative was maintained (so to the "normal" Noldorin speaker of Quenya, the Fëanorians would've lisped).
In the fanfic in question, this was taken up - technically a brilliant idea - culminating in the supposedly highly amusing sentence "Thurrender the Thilmaril!"

Which is where my annoyance starts.
Because not all s-sounds were turned interdental in Fëanorian speech. Only those that should've been interdental in the first place. (So a Fëanorian would've said "Surrender the Silmaril", perfectly correctly, whereas a Fingolfinian would, if you try to transcribe the whole thing into English, have gone for "Surrender ze Silmaril").
The "thurrender" I can live with, because it gets the point across, and while it's likely not correct, it's not blatantly wrong either.
But "Thilmaril"? Never.
Fëanor invented the bloody things, for Eru's sake. He also named them.
After the Quenya word for light, silme, which also happens to be the name of Tengwa #29 (and 30).
Which signifies the alveolar fricative. Always did. Independent of the speaker/ writer.
In other words, this is where the joke falls flat. Kind of horribly. Unfunnily. Annoyingly. Which is a pity, because the idea as such was quite nice (in my not so humble opinion).
Besides, these words were uttered in Thingol's court, where the interdental fricative would be the natural choice in its appointed place anyway, because Sindarin never stopped using it in the first place (and it's unlikely (though I suppose not impossible) that the speaker, I think it was Celegorm, used Quenya at all). Fail on two counts!

- Of course, not everybody can be an obsessed linguist, so I suppose the majority of readers will still be amused.
And I must grind my teeth in silence, because I neither want to spoil other people's fun nor start a flame war. Not really.

But it had to be said! ARRRRR!

- Anyway. I doubtlessly made a lot of mistakes in this (or any other) set, so someone of better Quenya skills may well rant about me in their turn. ;)

Without further ado, the last consonantal Tengwar:
silme ([s] - light), esse or áze ([s] or [z] - name or sunlight), and hyarmen ([ç] - south).
The sentences:
29 (30): The light of the Trees now lives only in the Silmarils.
31 (32): A child receives its names when it first sees sunlight.*
33: Many of his journeys led Olórin to the south.

- - -
*I have assumed that "to see sunlight" is sufficiently close to "seeing the light of day" (which is, well, the same thing) so it can be used as an idiom for "being born".
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Comments11
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razzigyrl's avatar
...:giggle: Boy howdy. ;P Your work is gorgeous, and after reading all the Author's comment about the complexity of linguistics and rather understanding the frustration if not the language, I scroll back up to ogle once more, and am reduced to, "Oooh. Pretty..."

!yoJ