Tyelpetéma

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Tyelpetéma was one of the five témar or sound-series of the Tengwar writing system.

The Tyelpetéma appears to have been unique; while each of the other four series consisted of a set of six individual 'letters', the palatal sounds of the Tyelpetéma were formed by adding a diacritic mark of two dots beneath another character. This is the equivalent of adding a 'y' after the letter in English to form a single distinct consonant sound.[1] As an example, the sound 'ty' here has the same sound as the initial consonant in the (British pronunciation of) the English word 'tune' - something close to, but distinct from, 'ch'.[2]

The names of the tengwar of that series were: Tyelpe, Indyo, Istyar, Intya, Nyelle and Arya.[3]

In languages like the Western, which made much use of consonants such as our ch, j, sh, Series III was usually applied to these; in which case Series IV was applied to the normal k-series (calmatéma). In Quenya, which possessed besides the calmatéma both a palatal series (tyelpetéma) and a labialize series (quessetema), the palatals were represented by a Fëanorian diacritic denoting ‘following y’ (usually two underposed dots), while Series IV was a kw-series.

The representation of the sounds here is the same as that employed in transcription and described above, except that here ‘’ch’’ represents the ‘’ch’’ in English ‘’church’’; ‘’j’’ represents the sound of English ‘’j’’, and ‘’zh’’ the sound heard in ‘’azure’’ and ‘’occasion’’.[4]

References

  1. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E, "Writing", "The Fëanorian Letters"
  2. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E, "Writing", Consonants, TY
  3. Vinyar Tengwar, Number 46, July 2004
  4. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E, "Writing", "The Fëanorian Letters"