The Pages of The Gray WizardOrthography
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2.1 Orthography (taithelar)To fully appreciate this page, it is necessary to download and install two fonts: fonts.zip
The influence of elvish culture on the early inhabitants of ámman is nowhere more evident than in the various orthographic forms used to transcribe their languages. All of the earliest texts are written using a Tengwar variant known as cuenid-ûar. By the time the sarnos codex was composed, a native form of writing had come into widespread use. This native form, called annæn-ûar was based on the cuenid-ûar model. All of the languages derived from vulánayal use the annæn-ûar orthographic model. The graphic structure of the graphemes in this model is reflective of the underlying phonetic properties of the phonemes they represent. This grapheme/phoneme mapping apparently held without exception for the phonology of early vulánayal, but has undergone diachronic distortions in the derivative languages. In their original forms, each grapheme was composed of a staff and a bow. Variations in the mode of the staff and the mode, type, and form of the bow signaled specific phonetic properties. The staff of each grapheme was written in three forms reflecting distinctive manners of articulation
The bow of each grapheme was written in two forms reflecting the voice aspect
Variations in the bow reflected gross articulatory features
Although the current forms represented below show deviations from these original forms, much of the original mappings remain. ámman îar is currently written using a cursive script and a corresponding block letter form based on the annæn-ûar forms. These forms are called tal (tal-eglar for the script and tal-taith for the block letters). The languages of ámman can be transliterated into the standard Latin alphabet and all descriptions in this grammar will include this transliteration. 2.1.1 the eglar formstal-eglar consonants
tal-eglar vowels
2.1.2 the taith forms2.1.3 example textBeren and Luthien - JRRT
The leaves were long, the grass was green, i
verenan nai luTyel i vérenan nai lúthîel |