JOST A MON

The idle ramblings of a Jack of some trades, Master of none

Apr 7, 2007

The Tengwar of Fëanor

Right. So Tolkien, in his infinite wisdom and fecund imagination, concocted languages of superlative beauty and expressiveness. Not content with mere grammar and linguistics, he designed fonts as well. Or rather, he reported that Fëanor created them when he could spare time from his life's work - the Silmarils, wrought from the light of the Two Trees, blessed by Yavanna, coveted and stolen by Morgoth, and the cause of the long war and bitter defeat of the High Elves in Middle Earth.

Heady stuff. And considering that the appendices to the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, and the collected notes of Tolkien compiled by his son contain so much information on the languages of his worlds, one would think that there would be little more to add by others. But one would think wrong:
  1. A Dictionary of Sindarin
  2. All the languages of Tolkien.
  3. Fonts, galore.
I've been trying with a singular lack of success to post something in the Tengwar font. I even thought I could upload a document with the appropriate font into Google Docs. But no. All I get is: Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. [N. Hawthorne]

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