This might be the final design
Let me sum up what led us to this layout, why it is cool and why you should have it.
TL;DRThere's no TL;DR, if you are geek enough to buy this set you should find the time to read this text!
ForewordsPlease bear in mind that
I'm no Elvish expert. I love Tolkien's work since before it was cool, I'm one of the few who actually read the Silmarillion, I did a lot of research for this keyboard but
it is not guaranteed to be 100% flawless or functional.
Elvish, Elven, Sindarin, Quenya, ...A bit of clarification regarding elven languages we are using here.
We are commonly calling the language of the Elves "Elvish" just for the sake of simplicity and because as Humans we are arrogant. Elf is a race, such as Human (or simply Man). You don't call the language of Humans "Humanish". I find extremely rude to use "Elvish", unless you want to be derogatory on purpose (like the Nazgul calling Arwen "she-elf"). I think "Elven Tongue" is the proper way to reference to the languages of the Elves.
Note that I said "languages". As we speak a wide variety of languages (English, Italian, Korean, Russian, ...) in the same way Elves speak Telerin, Eldarin, Quenya, Sindarin, Nondorin, ...
While maybe Quenya would have been a better choice (it means litterarly "elf-language") we chose Sindarin because we have a wider vocabulary for this equally sophisticated language. Sindar Elves (or Grey Elves) stayed longer in the land of mortals so presumably they had more time (and need) to design a keyboard (can't believe I wrote that...).
TengwarTengwar is the
writing system (script) used by Elves. You can think of it like the Latin letters of ours, or the Japanese Kanji.
Even though all Elves use Tengwar (as far as I know), there are of course differences between Quenya Tengwar and Sindarin Tengwar, in the same way there are differences between written Italian and written French.
For this keyboard we use
Tengwar Sindarin in the Mode of Beleriand, mainly because it's the phonetic used in the West Gate of Moria, or Doors of Durin. You remember "Pedo Mellon a Minno" (Speak, friend, and enter), right?
Keyboard layoutsTolkien used tengwar a lot to phonetically transliterate English, it would have been relatively easy to use Tokien's English-to-Tengwar chart to make the keyboard design.
Take the first tengwar
which sounds like "T" in "Tie". We could have used this sound in place of the letter T on the keyboard.
Same goes for "P" like in "Pie"
... and so on.
This method is simple and could be used to write your name in Tengwar but it presents a series of problems. The first one being conceptual.
The idea was to create a keyboard designed by Elves, not by some Italian (me) or American (samwisekoi) guy willing to write "Elvish" (intended).
Secondly, English transliteration doesn't use some of the Tengwar.
Thirdly, we do not all speak English and each language would need a different transliteration (hence a different layout). For example the sound:
would be J (as in "Jive") in English, but G in Italian.
Lastly, we also wanted a stylish and pleasant to watch keyboard.
An alternative would have been to use Daniel Smith's charts. Most of this project is based on Dan's work. He created a windows font to write Sindarin and Quenya and he already found a smart way to write tengwar with a standard keyboard. A key set with Dan's chart would let you write Sindarin by just installing his font. What we didn't like about this method is that the keyboard layout looks like crap.
The One Layout (to rule them all)
We tried half a dozen layouts (have a look at the IC thread) and at the end I believe we found a good compromise.
The main Tengwar sounds are all consonants and are strictly classified. Have a look at the first tengwar symbols.
They are placed in a grid of 4 columns by 6 rows. Tengwar symbols reduce in "relevance" on higher rows, so the most important sounds are found at the beginning of the grid.
Now have a look at the keyboard layout above. You'll find in our QWERTY row: tinco - parma - calma - quesse - ando - umbar - anga- ungwe
So the first alpha row of the keyboard contains the most important tengwar and all other tengwar are ordered in the same manner in the rows below. It is extremely easy to find a sound if you have a tengwar chart by your side. It's not a layout for touch typists, it's more for learning Sindarin, but I believe that this rational layout would receive Elrond's approval.
Tehtar, numbers and other symbolsWe already said that the main tengwar are all consonants. What about the vowels?
Vowels are represented by
Tehtar which are those small symbols (accents) above or below the tengwa. In our layout you'll find most of the Tehtar to the right of the keyboard together with punctuation. Some tehtar are strictly bound to a tengwa, such as the small curl in "malta" (on the X key). You can do those tehtar with shift+key.
Additional tengwar are in the number row, while all numbers are performed with shift+key.
ModifiersMost of the modifiers have been translated into Sindarin. Of course we had to use a bit of imagination, but overall it worked pretty well. The followings are the mods translation.
Modifier > Sindarin > Actual meaningEscape > awarthol > abandon
Alt > seidiol > set aside
Control > torthol > control
Back space > dravol > hew
Insert > nestagel > insert
Delete > dagel > slay
Home > bâr > home
End > meth > end
Page Up > ambenn > up
Page Down > dadbenn > down
I hope all of this makes sense and answers all your questions regarding this wonderful keycap-set. All in all this should be considered as an otaku keyboard with (Elven) benefits. It could be used to write Sindarin (or even Quenya) but it needs a lot of time and dedication.
If there's enough interest I might find some time to make a tutorial on how to actually write with this keyboard.
