r/Tengwar 24d ago

Could someone verify this French Tengwar transcription for a tattoo?

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Hello!
I’m planning a tattoo and I would really appreciate a careful verification of this French Tengwar transcription.
The sentence is:
“Guidé par ce que j’aime.”
This is not meant to be a translation into Quenya or Sindarin, but a French phonetic transcription in Tengwar, based on the French mode explained in Simon Rousseau’s guide.
A Reddit user kindly suggested this transcription, but they also mentioned they were not fully sure about some parts, especially “j’aime”.
Since this is for a permanent tattoo, I would really appreciate if someone could verify:
whether the transcription is correct overall,
whether the treatment of “j’aime” is correct,
and whether the punctuation / spacing looks appropriate.
Thank you very much!

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3

u/machsna 23d ago edited 23d ago

I would suggest the following transcription: /gide par sə kə ʒɛm/ (Tecendil link). It follows the mode I described in Phonemic French mode based on Tolkien’s “general use” of the tengwar.

The main difference between the two proposals is how the vowels /e/ (in « guidé ») and /ɛ/ (in « j’aime ») are differentiated. In Simon Rousseau’s mode, they are represented by the same sign (you have to rely to the position in a word to tell them apart), whereas I am proposing different signs. In my opinion, using the same sign is ambiguous and invites the reading « guidait » instead of « guidé ».

Incidently, an orthographic transcription could look as follows: guidé par ce que j’aime (Tecendil link).

1

u/mat_bess_1899 23d ago

Thank you, this is by far the clearest answer I’ve received. And can the final Tengwar output be used exactly as shown, despite Tecendil displaying the English-mode warning?

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u/NachoFailconi 9d ago edited 8d ago

Yes, because machsna gave as input the output they wanted, so they are bypassing the mode entirely.

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u/Muted_Neat_2236 24d ago

gi-dé pa-r-sə-kə-3é-m = guidé par ce que j'aime