#hi sorry it's Elf Time again if you hadn't noticed. I claim no responsibility for this development OTL

[paradife-loft]

language & writing headcanon dump

some Quenya, some Sindarin; mostly just wanted them collected in one place

some of the first sarati texts written in Aman, prior to the invention of paper, were written on bamboo strips. early early beginnings of writing, of the sort that Rúmil (&co) would've worked on during the Great Journey, would've been on animal hides, but in Aman, most of what was produced by hunting and raising livestock was diverted to other purposes instead - it was relatively a rarer material, that couldn't be replenished as quickly & easily as bamboo groves could be, and people wanted leather for clothing & shoes. (I'm also contemplating the idea of bamboo growing prominently on Taniquetil, which a) is pretty and b) would lend another spiritual dimension to its use as a writing material.)

the presence of the bar that each sarat attached to in most attested "standard"/book use, then originally started out as a representation of the edge of each bamboo strip that a line of text would be written on, for aesthetic reasons as well as greater clarity between lines when written on paper (or other materials). (vowel diacritics, since they go on the opposite side of the bar from each consonant sarat, were then a later addition once paper took over as the primary writing material - and I'm inclined to say could still be left off if the writer chose to do so. written texts didn't start out intended as stand-alone documents, but more like memory aids to known oral Quenya traditions.)

(genuinely don't remember if this is explicitly written in canon anywhere, but it's heavily enough implied either way - the Quendi absolutely developed a strong oral culture, and most groups retained this to a significant degree, even when the Noldor showed up later with writing.)

even though the tengwar eventually displaced it (among the Noldor anyway) for regular use, I do really like the idea of heavily stylized, artistic sarati calligraphy continuing to be a thing - at least in Aman, for sure; I think it'd probably drop by the wayside in Beleriand in favor of. well if you're doing calligraphy, do it in the letters we can all actually read. (less interest in things with a vibe of being intentionally antiquated, for one; and less interest (though certainly not none) in things that would be purely beautiful without a corresponding functional aspect.) - but yeah, calligraphic sarati perhaps being one of the main places the doubled/mirrored letter forms would get used; also I'm thinking about ways the bar attachment would be stylized in single-sided compositions, with broken-up pieces of it just the right size to demarcate the boundaries between words.

on a different note - I've mentioned/alluded to this a couple times, but it's 100% my headcanon that the tengwar Mode of Beleriand was a Curufin invention - and I'm even more in favor of this after discovering that, per the general tengwar page on the same site, "Contrary to the beliefs of Rúmil and his contemporaries, Feanor thought that the vowels had a phoneme value equal in importance to that of the consonants. The vowels were in the Tengwar, as in the Sarati, still usually represented by diacritic marks, called ómatehtar or “vowel-marks”. This was solely for the sake of compactness, though, and Feanor also constructed a mode for Quenya where each vowel was assigned to a tengwa. This mode was primarily intended for the “loremasters”, and was rarely used." like I just love the idea of Curvo setting out to standardize writing for Sindarin and going okay y'know what, if we get to start from scratch, we are BRINGING BACK DAD'S LINGUISTIC THEORIES (which are objectively correct) while we're at it!

(and then people still went largely and used tehtar for Sindarin anyway. silly people.)(like I mean sure it's "what they're used to" and such, but, c'mon. innovation!!!!! justice for vowels!!!!)

(if you're wondering where you've heard of the mode of Beleriand from in the actual canon - the answer is "the Doors of Durin". it's the mode used for the inscription on the arches of the Doors of Durin. why yes this is all very intentional of me, why do you ask? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

another Curufin-and-writing thing - y'know what a quanta sarme/full-vowel mode is easier for than an omatehtar mode is? developing a movable-type printing press. I really like the idea of that being something Curufin & contemporaries were working on during the Long Peace in Himlad - perhaps intended initially for economic records, currency notes, etc. in East Beleriand (because what writing invention isn't first used for economic purposes lol), but also perhaps mass-distribution of musical scores, and general literacy promotion (esp among the Sindar who settled there too). I can also see the overall machine being something they'd gift to the Ered Luin dwarves, perhaps aiding in their wider adoption of the cirth.

alas, you probably can't lug printing presses halfway across the continent with a train full of refugees, so the existing models wouldn't have made it to Nargothrond after Himlad fell. and in general, I feel like elves would have less motivation to use or recreate them in a lot of circumstances - between the combination of oral traditions, good memories, small population sizes, lack of central written religious documents, and hand-writing/calligraphy/illumination absolutely being a defined craft among the Noldor, that would lend kind of an attitude of "okay but why though" to the whole idea of mechanically-produced writing, even in places where having mass-produced books for a civilian populace might've been more contextually appealing (cough, Gondolin). so ultimately, like a lot of things, the invention probably doesn't make it through the First Age intact.

.....unless I maybe wanna bring it back again for Ost-in-Edhil? we'll see. though even there, I feel like the elves would largely lack a lot of the time pressure that makes it an attractive invention in other contexts...? one reason I like Himlad/East Beleriand generally as a good setting for printing press development, is the way the war with Morgoth would create that time pressure in a way that wouldn't instinctively exist for many elves otherwise. so... yeah.