The consonant tengwar
Every Phi syllable opens with a consonant, so every tengwa's real job is to be that opening: a vowel only ever rides on top of it. Fifteen tengwar cover the whole inventory: nine consonants that keep one shape everywhere, four fricative digraphs that each collapse into one shape, and r, which alone takes two different shapes depending on where it sits in a word. Chapter 5 is that shape's own chapter. Learn the shape, not the keypress; a shape read at a glance is the entire point of this mode.
Four of the shapes carry two sounds each, because Phi's four digraphs (ph, th, sh, wh) are two letters in romanization but one sound and one tengwa in speech and in Tengwar alike. Formen, thúlë, harma, and hwesta never split.
| Grapheme | Tengwa | Example |
|---|---|---|
| p | parma | pelua (paper) |
| t | tinco | towe (well) |
| k | calma | keruko (sturdy) |
| m | malta | manuwe (hand) |
| n | númen | nomei (name) |
| r | rómen / órë | see chapter 5 |
| ph | formen | phari (pen) |
| th | thúlë | thekiro (write) |
| sh | harma | shelu (book) |
| wh | hwesta | whunei (breathe) |
| s | silmë nuquerna | silero (star) |
| h | hyarmen | hurao (patient) |
| w | vala | woru (keeper) |
| l | lambë | lei (harmony) |
Two of these rows hide a choice, and both choices are settled for you before you ever pick up a pen. Silmë has a plain form and a nuquerna form (the "inverted" shape written low enough to carry a tehta underneath it comfortably), and chapter 6 explains why Phi always writes the second one. Rómen and órë are not two options for the same sound at all; they are two different sounds, the trilled r that opens a word and the tapped r that never does, and chapter 5 is where the difference becomes a rule you can apply without listening for it first.
Practice the shapes on their own before chapter 3 adds tehtar to them. Say each example aloud, find its tengwa in the table above, then look for it again in the rendered lines ahead: every example sentence in this pamphlet shows its Tengwar directly above its romanization, so the shape itself is always there to check against. A hand that traces the real form stops needing the table faster than a hand that only reads about it.