Typing Tengwar

There is a utility, Keyman, that can be used to simulate other keyboards and change key mappings. With the keyboards I wrote, it can be used to type Tengwar in a word processor and see the result immediately. So far, I have written keyboards for English, Dutch and Quenya.

What you need

• Windows (I'm sorry about that)
• Keyman 5, available from Tavultesoft
• at least one of Dan Smith's Tengwar fonts, or a font with a similar keyboard mapping
• the Tengwar keyboard file. I created one for English, one for Dutch and one for Quenya. In the section below, you can download them, together with some documentation.
• some basic knowledge of Tengwar. A good place to start is Amanye Tenceli.

How it works

After you've installed everything, you start Keyman. You start your favorite word processor and select a Tengwar font. Then, you click on the Keyman icon in the task tray and select the Tengwar keyboard. When you type something in your word processor, the appropriate tengwar will appear on the screen as if you had translated them with a utitity such as TengScribe. So if you type `calma' in the Quenya mode, the output will be

English tengwar/tehtar mode Download

This mode is primarily meant for English, but very useful for Sindarin as well. Vowels are represented as tehtar above the consonant that follows them. Nasal bars, s-hooks and underbars (for consonant prolonging) are used wherever possible, but you can overrule them if you want. It isn't meant to translate perfect orthographic English to perfect phonemic Tengwar, but if you take some time to experiment, typing English shouldn't be difficult. This mode hasn't been updated since 19-10-2001.

Dutch tengwar/tehtar mode Download

This mode is basically the same as the English mode, except that I adapted it for the Dutch sound and spelling system. If you wondered how the terrible Dutch vowel system could ever fit in a tengwar/tehtar mode, read the description of my Dutch mode (you need Dan Smith's fonts). This keyboard hasn't been updated since 19-10-2001. The mode description has been updated on 1-10-2003, however.

Quenya Download Read the documentation (PDF)

This is the standard mode for Quenya. It does exactly what it should do, so there's not much to tell. I think it's much better than my other modes, but it's also totally different. This mode was created on 9-12-2001.

What's next?

With the Keyman Development Kit, anyone can create new modes. If anyone is creating a mode for Keyman or has question about my source, please mail me at flobbe@ai.rug.nl. If you found any bugs or have other suggestions, I'd like to hear it too.