Up for air

The move to Wisconsin has taken a lot of time, so I haven't been blogging regularly. I hope to rectify that starting this week, as things are beginning to calm down a bit.

David+

Comments

[Ches]

Hope that everything is settling in nicely for you and yours, and that the new digs are everything you hoped.

[gilraen]

Hi David,
Hope the moving went well. I'm just wondering what 'ayia' means (I think it's quenya? I know iluvatar but this's got me stumped!) and what mode your tengwar header's in, as the 'i' of ayia (is it long?) isn't over the anna tengwa or a long carrier. Is the the mode of Beleriand?
Best wishes,
a fellow enthusiast

[FrDavid]

(Blushes)

Ayia (in Quenya), as in "Ayia Earendel." So the translation would be "Hail creator."

I'm blushing because I really have no Elvish chops. I used a Tengwar scribe program to transcribe it. If it needs to be corrected, and you know what the correct spelling would be, I'd be happy to do it.

(I've been dreading the day when someone with a real knowledge of Elvish would show up and tell me what a schmuck I am....) ;-)

David+

[gilraen]

No worries. The tengwar's a beautiful script, it's no wonder you liked it.
Since you're speaking in Quenya, though, you should use the Classical mode, which you can probably adapt the program to accomodate. 'Aiya Ilùvatar' in this mode would be spelled:
yanta with 'a' tehta, anna with palatalization tehta underneath and 'a' tehta above
space
short carrier with 'i' tehta, lambe, long carrier with 'u' tehta, vala with 'a' tehta, tinco with 'a' tehta, òre.
Tehta is short for òmatehta, which is the diacritic over a consonant. It's hard to write out the spelling of words in tengwar because of these. For more about the classical mode, I highly recommend this website: http://at.mansbjorkman.net/teng_quenya.htm
which has information on all Tolkien's scripts.
For more about Quenya, try http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/
which is all about his languages. Good luck with the tengwar!
Ilùvatar laituva elyë.