I started learning Elvish in ~2001, when (of course) the first Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie came out. Soon after, my parents bought me a copy of The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth by Ruth S. Noel. Throughout high school, the book accompanied me everywhere.
I adopted a particular form of Tengwar (Elvish lettering), and have been using it for handwritten notes ever since.
In April 2026, I posed a challenge on Mastodon – asking the Latin nerds to help me translate “Keep it secret – keep it safe”. In exchange, I’ll write any requested phrases in Tengwar.
That kicked off a renewed obsession: if I was going to offer this, I was going to do it RIGHT! So, I’ve been digging into primary sources and working to better understand the variations Tolkien himself used for different languages. I’m using samples written by Tolkien himself to guide my hand when transliterating phrases into this beautiful script.
It’s been about 20 years since I really dug into it, and in that time, there’s been an explosion of resources online! Book PDFs, subreddits, archives of the two(!!) journals dedicated to Tolkien linguistics… Fortunately, I have enough skill to sift through various fan-made resources, and it’s a very mixed bag.
One person also asked me to translate a phrase into Elvish, so I’ve been solidifying that as well. THAT is a deep, deep rabbithole, and I’m so happy to be here again!
merlin / alex glow (@[email protected])
Topics to add: