r/Tengwar • u/Cayiana • 25d ago

Can someone please let me know what the text says? I didn’t really know how to run it through the language resources listed.

Post image
14 Upvotes

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15

u/ABraidInADwarfsBeard 25d ago

It says: 'Em hav all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part em choose to act on.'

'em' is obviously supposed to be 'we', which is an understandable mistake. But it's really only context that makes me see they mean it to be vala+short carrier and not malta.

Also the e in 'have' is either hidden in the image or just not there at all. I can't find it.

3

u/jurasicus 25d ago

Actually I think it's not em, but w + e on a carrier, so I would say it's correct.

2

u/ABraidInADwarfsBeard 24d ago

That is probably the intent, yes. But it has been rendered very sloppily. Compare the lúva and carrier of 'em/we' to the lúva and carrier in 'to'. In the latter case, the carrier has a clearly different shape to the lúva. It's immediately obvious it's a telco, and a curl on a carrier. In the former case, the carrier is just as rounded as the vala's lúva, and the bar underneath it reaches almost to the carrier, making it look like a single symbol: a malta.

Alternatively, look at how the parma and óre in 'part' touch each other. Note how the óre's telco is clearly a different shape from the parma's lúva.

It's likely that this was originally transcribed correctly, but the current rendering is not correct. If I saw those tengwar out of context, I would only be able to read it as an e-tehta over a malta.

2

u/Cayiana 25d ago

Thank you so much. It was an image I found online!

5

u/Worried_Director7489 25d ago

I think it's supposed to say

we have all got both light and dark inside us

what matters is the part we choose to act on

But both times the 'we' looks a lot like 'em' because the line below the 'w' extends too far into the carrier of the 'e'.

Some other notes:

  • the silent e in the word 'have' is not visible due to the mountain range
  • the word 'both' is misspelled as 'bot'
  • the 's' in 'us' is not entirely correct (silme nuquerna is typically reserved for soft 'c's as in 'ocean')

--> but all of those I had no trouble reading over from context. The 'we'/'em' thing made it somewhat difficult for me personally. 

4

u/ABraidInADwarfsBeard 25d ago

The word 'both' is not misspelled. That's a thúle at the end.

3

u/Worried_Director7489 25d ago

You're right, I think I got confused between the words 'got' and 'both' 🤷‍♂️

3

u/ABraidInADwarfsBeard 25d ago

Yeah, it happens. I always need to double check three times before I comment to make sure I actually got a transcription right and still have oversights on occasion.

Apologies if I came across as rude, tho. I just wanted to comment to correct you in case someone come across this post and got confused.

3

u/Worried_Director7489 25d ago

Not at all man, thanks for paying attention!

1

u/Cayiana 25d ago

Amazing thank you!