Who created the Tengwar script and where was it developed?
The Elf Fëanor crafted the Tengwar script in the ancient city of Valinor to record the songs of his people. He replaced the older term sarati used by Rúmil of Tirion with this new system.
Questions about Tengwar
Short answers, pulled from the story.
When did J.R.R. Tolkien begin developing precursors to the Tengwar script?
J.R.R. Tolkien began developing precursors to this script in the late 1910s under the name Sarati. By 1922 he had created the Valmaric script which featured many Tengwar shapes and inherent vowels.
What is the phonetic basis for the shape of each tengwa character?
The shape of each tengwa corresponds directly to how a sound is produced by the human mouth using five places of articulation. These include labial, dental, palatal, velar, and glottal sounds arranged in specific columns.
How are vowels represented in different modes within the Tengwar system?
Different languages require specific orthographies called modes within the Tengwar system that map basic consonants to inherent vowels or use diacritics. The classical mode uses ómatehtar diacritics placed above consonants while Sindarin and English often place these vowel signs after the consonant instead.
When was the Tengwar script proposed for inclusion in the Unicode standard?
Michael Everson proposed including Tengwar in the Unicode standard during 1997. The range U+16000 to U+160FF was tentatively allocated for this script in the 2023 Unicode roadmap.