Tengwar

Tengwar
The word "Tengwar" written using the Tengwar script in the Quenya mode
Type	Alternative abugida or alphabet according to the "mode"
Languages	a number of Tolkien's constructed languages, Quenya and Sindarin, English
Creator	J. R. R. Tolkien
Time period	1930s–present
Parent systems	Sarati Tengwar
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Teng, 290

The Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. Within the fictional context of Tolkien's legendarium, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues Quenya and Telerin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written using the tengwar, including Sindarin. Tolkien used tengwar to write English: most of Tolkien's tengwar samples are actually in English.

According to The War of the Jewels (Appendix D to Quendi and Eldar), Fëanor, when he created his script, introduced a change in terminology. He called a letter, i.e. a written representation of a spoken phoneme (tengwë) a tengwa. Previously, any letter or symbol had been called a sarat (from *sar "incise"). The alphabet of Rúmil of Valinor, on which Fëanor supposedly based his own work, was known as sarati. It later became known as "Tengwar of Rúmil".

The plural of tengwa was tengwar, and this is the name by which Fëanor's system became known. Since, however, in commonly used modes, an individual tengwa was equivalent to a consonant, the term tengwar in popular use became equivalent to "consonant sign", and the vowel signs were known as ómatehtar. By loan-translation, the tengwar became known as tîw (singular têw) in Sindarin, when they were introduced to Beleriand. The letters of the earlier alphabet native to Sindarin were called cirth (singular certh, probably from *kirte "cutting", and thus semantically analogous to Quenya sarat). This term was loaned into exilic Quenya as certa, plural certar.

The sarati, a script developed by Tolkien in the late 1910s and described in Parma Eldalamberon 13, anticipates many features of the tengwar: vowel representation by diacritics (which is found in many tengwar varieties); different tengwar shapes; and a few correspondences between sound features and letter shape features (though inconsistent).