chrisruzin.net :: Tengwar Challenge 3 (August 18, 2003)

Using the diphgraph method ‘radiance’ looks right. Tolkien would probably not have used an extended ‘Formen’ for ‘ph’, just plain ‘Formen’. Likewise, he probably would not have used ‘Alda’ for ‘ld’.

I don’t like how ‘builder’ is written. The ‘u’ here does not have a w-type sound. I think that I would just place the ‘u’ on a carrier instead or possibly as a curl above ‘Anna’.

An ‘i’ is missing from ‘immortality’.

I would use ‘Anga’ instead of ‘Ungwe’ for the ‘g’ in ‘magician’. Just as you did in ‘changes’. Tolkien would not have used the o-tehta underneath as you did in ‘to’. He’d use a short carrier instead.

I would never use a diphgraph as you have in ‘green’. We do have a sample of Tolkien writting ‘ee’ and he used two short carriers for it. Appendix offers probably the best solution, that is doubling the tehta mark and placing it above the ‘n’.

As a final note, I don’t think the the word ‘right’ belongs before ‘royal’, does it?

Boy, was that sappy Thanks for the challenge, though!

C. McKay appears to be right: taking a look at http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/inglife.htm#LOVE , there is no word “right” in that quotation. You left out a few other bits, though: “every fire on every hearth”, “for music is the voice of love” (yeah, that’s what I’m thinkin’ every time I listen to “Mars” from “The Planets”), and of course there’s a whole bit at the end that you left off, but I suppose you just wanted to keep things a little brief.

Surprised to see you posting a quote, albeit an encoded one, from someone so active in Atheism and Secular Humanism.

‘only’: I use the n-tehta only over the main letters, and I tought this is the only place where it’s attested

‘radiant’: I wouldn’t make a one-sign analysis of ‘ia’, as it can be considered two syllables; I think the c-shaped stemless calma shouldn’t be used but in ‘ea, oa’

‘mother’: with anto

‘inspirer’ is very difficult to write; I’d perhaps write it like ‘inspire’ (i.e. with oore) and just add an oore; but your suggestion’s also fine; another posibility: like yours, but with a subcript point under the roomen, no tehta on oore

‘philosophers’: the use of extended parma for ‘ph’ can be justified by analogy to the use of extended quesse for ‘ch’ (pronounced as /k/) in ‘Christmas’ in DTS 10 (if I remember well).

‘every’ should have roomen

‘builder’ the following-w tehta seems fine to me (though it looks strange)

‘immortality’: I’d place the tilde above, as this makes the word look more the same like the word ‘mortality’

‘magician’: I wouldn’t make a one-sign analysis of the ‘ia’, because I think the ‘i’ with the preceding ‘c’ (at least in actual English), and thus should be written with the following-y tehta: two points below; but the ‘i’ could also be written on a short carrier, maybe the better solution

Hi Chris

Sorry for the delay.

I suggested the following-w-tehta in the word builder because I thought that in this word, the i is predominant over the u (the same happens in the word ‘friend’ where I think the ‘e’ is predominant over the ‘i’). But by now, I think it’s a bad idea to distinguish between some cases of a digraph and other cases of the same digraph, when principally it’s always the same digraph.