One tengwa, two vowels

mia thia lothea.
1SG 2SG love.
(I love you.)

lothea is six letters and three syllables in romanization: lo·the·a. In Tengwar it is two tengwar. Lambë carries the first syllable's single vowel, above, the way chapter 3 already taught. Thúlë carries the second syllable and the third at once: the e-tehta rides above thúlë, and the a-tehta (a different mark, for the vowel that follows in hiatus) rides below it. One consonant, two vowels, both visible, neither one written twice.

No vowel carrier ever appears in Phi Tengwar, and this is why one is never needed. Two facts about Phi's own sound rules make it airtight. Every word begins with a consonant, so no word ever needs a carrier at its head to hold an opening vowel: there is always a consonant already there to hold it. And the three-vowel constraint means at most two vowels ever stand together in a row, so a single tengwa's above-and-below is never asked to carry more than it has room for. A classical Tengwar mode built for a language with words that open on a vowel, or with three vowels in sequence, would need a carrier somewhere. Phi's mode never does, because Phi's phonology never asks it to.

Reading order follows from this directly, and it never varies: a tengwa, then its above vowel, then its below vowel if it has one. ruela is rómen carrying a hiatus, u above and e below (chapter 5 explains why word-initial r is always rómen), then lambë carrying its own single vowel, a. whunei is hwesta carrying u alone, then númen carrying a hiatus of its own, e above and i below. Say each aloud while you look at its Tengwar line: the hiatus is not hidden in Tengwar, it is the most visible thing on the page: the reader sees a vowel hanging below its tengwa and already knows, before reading a single letter further, that a new syllable is beginning right there.

mia ruela theomi.
1SG path trust.
(I trust the path.)

Trust the fit the same way. A hand that hesitates over ruela is looking for a carrier that Phi was never going to need.