page_title: Tengwar
section_title: Modes and sounds
hierarchical_section_title: Tengwar / Modes and sounds
caption_attribution_description: English: Tengwar with letter names. Font used is (c) Copyright 1988, 1994 Michael Urban Русский: Тенгвар с названиями букв. Использованные шрифты (c) Copyright 1988, 1994 Michael Urban
context_page_description: Tengwar is a constructed writing system, invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. The tengwar is used in his fictional world Middle-earth, for example the book The Lord of the Rings.
  In the Quenya language, tengwar means "letters", tengwa is the singular and means "letter".
  The tengwar are used to write some of Tolkien's constructed languages, like for example the elven languages Quenya and Sindarin. But Tolkien used the tengwar mostly for writing English. Because the tengwar is an alphabet, it can be used to write almost any language.
context_section_description: The tengwar have a certain order, and are usually shown in a table/chart. They are sorted by how they look, which is also connected to how they sound. Because it is an alphabet, every tengwa means a sound. The main tengwar letters are placed into four vertical series (témar) and six horizontal rows (tyeller).
  There are different ways to write with tengwar, which are called "modes". Between these modes there are differences, sometimes only a few and sometimes many differences. In different modes, the tengwar sometimes mean different sounds. In some modes the tengwar are used for vowels and consonants; and in other modes the tengwar are only used for the consonants, and the vowels are marked by signs above or below the tengwa, as in abugida writing. These vowel signs are called tehtar ("signs"; singular: tehta, "sign").
  There are different modes to write the different Middle-earth languages. People have also made new modes to write English and other modern languages with the tengwar.
  The tengwar is written in a table/chart with the way the letters sound. For example, if the sound comes from the front of the mouth it is in 1 row. Each column is for the sounds that come from the nose, throat, or lips.
caption: The tengwar table, with the names of individual tengwa.
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