Saturday, May 26, 2012

Feanorian Lettering

Hey Everyone! I know its been a while since I've posted anything, but I just recently remember I had this blog when I was doing a homework assignment. I have this great teacher that is really fun loving and we joke around a lot, so as a joke I translated one of my assignments into the Feanorian letters. (Of course, I attached the assignment in English too because I wanted to actually get credit for it.) I then remembered this blog and decided to give a shot at teaching how to write in the Feanorian letters. 

I will start by going down each column and naming what each lettering stands for. I will start with the column of the left. 
  1. t                 10. p              19. ch              28. k, kw
  2. d                 11. b             20. j                29. g
  3. th                12. f              21. sh, khw/hw23. ch
  4. dh               13. v              22. zh             24. gh
  5. n (nn)          14. m            23. nh             25. mh
  6. (untrilled) r, (n) 15. w            24. a,y            26. e
  7. r                  16. r (rh)       25. L              27. L, Lh
  8. s                  17. s             26. z              28. z
  9. h                  18. w (hw)    27. y (e)         29. w (u)
If you are confused by all the hw, rh, and gh, just think of it like stenography. If you had a mom who was stenographer she would tell you that stenography is writing symbols for syllables spoken in a word, and not the letters themselves. That is why stenography (shorthand) is so quick. Think about it, when you say the work "what" the syllable "h" actually comes before the "w", and when you say it, it sounds like, "hwat." That is what all that craziness really is. 

Now you might have noticed that all the vowels are not in there. That is because the vowels are conveyed using dots and lines above the consonants of the word. Here it gets a little tricky, because sometimes a word ends in a vowel and sometimes it starts with a vowel. So you can be unsure whether the vowel belongs before or behind the consonant it is above. I like to generally place the vowel above the preceding consonant, and write an actually lettering for the vowel if it starts the word. 

The vowels are like so: One dot above a letter means it is an "i" or an "e." Two dots means it is "ie." Three dots means its an "a." A squiggly line like "~" means its an "o" or a "u." If you want to say I singularly  make a symbol like a "j" or a ";" and it will mean "I." 

This is really very simple once you get the hang of it. I taught myself how to do this. You can find this lettering in the Appendix of The Return of the King. It also gives explanations in the Appendix if this was unclear.