Talk:Cirth

Cirth was nominated as a Language and literature good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (December 19, 2016). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

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Who wrote this? and why do people care more about the tengwar that the angerthas???Jrcrisologo 03:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A list of the people who have contributed to this article can be seen on the history page. --CBDunkerson 10:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

this is an awful article. doesn't fit in with formatting standards. inadequate information. doesn't cite sources of information. i don't know how to do it because i'm a newbie but i suggest a senior merge it with the other article "cirth" as was suggested by the other user or at the very elast exand on the information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony4moroney (talk • contribs) 12:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the table that shows the Cirth characters should have the IPA in it, just to help with pronunciation. Seriously, it's as if a child wrote it. How is anyone supposed to know what the table is talking about? I could add the IPA pronunciation myself, but I don't know how to pronounce the letters. Adding the IPA would probably make more sense than "nj-z" or "&" or "+h". I could also possibly upload some images of the runic letters for those who don't have the unicode to support them, which would make more sense than "mirror rune of ᚹ w". Also, characters number 57 and 58 don't appear to have any kind of pronunciation, and the footnotes don't seem to lead anywhere. In short, that table seems pretty darn confusing. Cloudy fox 001 (talk) 22:58, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

	p		ʒ		l		ɛ
	b		ndʒ–z		l̥		ɛ:
	f		k		ŋg–nd		ɑ
	v		g		s–h		ɑ:
	ʍ		x		s–ʔ		ɔ
	m		ɣ		z–ŋ		ɔ:
	ɱ, mb		ŋ–n		ŋg*		œ
	t		kʷ		nd–ndʒ		n*
	d		gʷ		i, (j)		h–s
	θ		xʷ		j*		ə* ?
	ð		ɣʷ, w		ç* ?		ʌ* ?
	n–r		ŋgʷ		u		ps*
	tʃ		nʷ		u:		ts*
	dʒ		r–dʒ		w		ʰ
	ʃ		r̥–ʒ		y		&

The transliteration values are taken from the Lord of the Rings Appendix E. The problem with adding IPA (which I'm for) is that the Cirth are used to write several different languages. I could probably add IPA for Sindarin though it might contain some guesswork. Khuzdûl on the other hand I know almost nothing about. There are also some inconsistencies between the transliteration schemes Tolkien used for his languages. This one seems to represent yet another one. In Sindarin y represents [y] while in Quenya it represents [j]. Here I suppose y is [j] and ü is [y]. Then there's ch which is [x] in Sindarin but here I believe it's [tʃ]. Instead [x] is represented by kh, though in Khuzdûl that would represent [kʰ] – I assume +h is used to mark aspiration with this scheme. I could go on but I just wanted to illustrate how complicated it is. —Tasnu Arakun (talk) 22:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

—

I can also add that the current table is terrible. First of I agree that Unicode characters should not be used, though mainly for the reason that Cirth is not yet part of the Unicode standard. I have made and uploaded SVG images of the 60 cirth to Commons and arranged them in a nice table. Then there are some cirth missing while alternative glyph shapes (e.g. 37, 38) are considered separate characters. The column "corresponding runic glyph" should probably be removed – it looks like someone's own research to me. —Tasnu Arakun (talk) 22:42, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

—

I have now replaced the table with a new one. This one is more compact, uses svg-images and does hopefully not contain any errors. It still uses Tolkien's transliteration scheme though. However, I'll post a table with IPA values bellow. It should be mostly correct for Sindarin, but less so for Quenya and Khuzdûl. The cirth marked with '?' i really don't have a clue and are just wild guesses. Please enjoy! —Tasnu Arakun (talk) 11:26, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

mh won't be [ɱ]; rather it will presumably be old Sindarin lenited m, [ṽ]. The other guesses look reasonable, though I might've written devoiced [j̥] rather than [ç]. 4pq1injbok (talk) 21:31, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've modified the annotation of the table in §Letters.

• Tolkien used the notation "(_)" for cirth and sound-values in Elvish use only, and "_*" for cirth and sound-values in Dwarvish use only. Since the meanings are parallel, I've substituted "_°" (U+00B0 degree sign) for the parentheses.
• Since readers expect an asterisk to refer to a footnote, I've rearranged the notes to give * and ° footnote lines of their own, rather than leaving them embedded in a single long sentence in the middle of the paragraph as Tolkien did.
• I've added a note to explain the apostrophe in the third column, fifth row:

  s–’ †

• The "–" separating older and newer values for the same certh is a dash, not a hyphen.

--Thnidu (talk) 03:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have rewritten the whole article in my "User sandbox" (see User:Asþont/Cirth), improving the table with IPA sounds and creating a section for each of the modes used to write with Cirth (Early Cirth, Runes used in The Hobbit, Certhas Daeron, Angerthas Daeron, Angerthas Moria, Angerthas Erebor) allowing a complete set of information on Tolkien's runic alphabets.
Hope you'll like it. If you do, could I substitute this version with mine?
PS. if I submit my sandbox for review, am I going to create a page conflict (As my version and the current would have the same title)?

  ᚪᛋᚦᚩᚾᛏ (Asþont) | Talk  22:50, 5 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Asþont:Personally, in this case I think you can replace the existing article so long as yours contains all of the information of the original. I haven't done a comparison myself. I'd call it a major expansion. I'm probably biased by the poor state of the existing article. I have added additional information in the Unicode section which you can incorporate or I can adjust afterwards. DRMcCreedy (talk) 01:42, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Asþont: Thanks for publishing the update. I've restored the Unicode section. BTW: Gondolin_rune_b2.png is missing. DRMcCreedy (talk) 22:56, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmccreedy: again, I am happy you appreciated my work. I know one Gondolinic rune is missing: I have to create it on my computer and to upload it on WikiCommons. I am doing it as soon as possible.   ᚪᛋᚦᚩᚾᛏ (Asþont) | Talk  05:14, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article has been marked with the {{In-universe}} template by Kintetsubuffalo (talk · contribs). I am going to rewrite it in order to explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective in my sandbox: User:Asþont/Cirth. I will then post the new-written article here so to receive feedbacks. Advices are always well accepted!  ᚪᛋᚦᚩᚾᛏ (Asþont) | Talk  12:48, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: I have no time to improve the current article at the moment because of school. Hope I will have some time in July. Meanwhile I hope other editors will contribute to the article.  ᚪᛋᚦᚩᚾᛏ (Asþont) | Talk  10:57, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are many references to the rune values, but checking up on those references they are almost all for Tengwar, not Cirth. Of course, different alphabets for the languages probably provide the same pronunciations, but I still see some weird discrepancies I cannot resolve.

For example the chart 'The later Noldorin use' (APPENDIX ON RUNES, p. 461 of The History of Middle-earth Vol. 7: The Treason of Isengard) uses transliteration 'st' for the letter here marked with transliteration 'ch' (after Appendix E from LotR 3: Return of the King), using IPA [c⁽ȷ̊⁾] for Noldorin, while using transliteration 'ch' for the letter here marked 'kh' (/x/). This is very weird to me, because there is no way I can imagine using 'st' to transliterate a value close to /c/. The source 'RealElvish.net' seems to me less trustful than Tolkien's first-hand transliteration. Parma Eldalamberon XXII is a bit too dense for me to parse immediately, but at first glance it seems to not actually discuss the letter in question, and needs a bunch of linguistic inferencing. I think this needs to be made more explicit, or rather removed completely because it comes down to original work that deviates from Tolkien's source. Ocky7 (talk) 12:59, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Representing Tolkien’s writings (1) correctly referenced and (2) not wrong is often rather challenging. I’ll attempt to explain the points you raise, but in principle agree that a great deal of analysis is involved (unfortunately I don’t know any detailed article on the topic that we could cite).

• certh #13, TI Noldorin “st” vs App.E “ch” vs IPA [c⁽ȷ̊⁾] – Here the problem is primarily that the Wiki chart and the TI Appendix mean something different by the word ’Noldorin’. The chart uses it to refer to Ñoldorin Tarquesta, the day-to-day language of the Ñoldor, which is a dialect of Quenya. This is how Tolkien used the term in and after the Lord of the Rings. The TI Appendix however was written before Tolkien had developed this conception in a time when Sindarin didn’t exist yet. His Welsh-like language was instead spoken by the Noldor and therefore called Noldorin during that time. That is the Noldorin the TI Appendix refers to. Apart from the dating, this becomes also clear when you look at the given sounds: the mode includes ð, æ, œ, oe, ȳ... which only occur in Sindarin/Pre-LotR-Noldorin, but lacks several sounds like ty, qu necessary to represent Quenya (for more information see e. g. https://eldamo.org/content/words/word-2957722179.html). Thus the certh #13 has the value st in the mode for a draft of Sindarin, which has then no bearing on it’s IPA value for Ñoldorin Quenya according to the Angerthas Eregion.

The reasoning for the IPA runs like this: App.E: “The principal additions, however, the introductions of two new series, 13–17, and 23–28, were actually most probably inventions of the Noldor of Eregion, since they were used for the representation of sounds not found in Sindarin.” Since certh #13 (1) is transliterated ch and (2) doesn’t represent a sound in Sindarin (which does have ch = /x/, e. g. roch, na-chaered,...), this leaves open the other value that ch could sensibly have, namely the one in church /t͡ʃ/. This makes sense because the following values are j (= /d͡ʒ/) sh, zh, nj, so it’s apparently a palatal series and Tolkien used it like that in the book of Mazarbul (e. g. chamber, watcher on its last page, an picture is available at https://www.tolkienestate.com/painting/calligraphy/). All up until this I think is basically certain.

That the chart then gives [c⁽ȷ̊⁾] is due to a less certain inference (I think it’s nevertheless correct, but not as obvious): Since it’s a certh introduced by the Quenya-speeking Ñoldor and represents a sound not found in Sindarin, it stands to reason that it was meant to represent a sound that’s necessary for Quenya, and as a ‘palatal-ish uncoiced stop’ the only reasonable option is ty. This has according to PE22/66 (Parma Eldalamberon 22, p. 66) [c⁽ȷ̊⁾] in Noldorin Quenya, while the in Vanyarin Quenya it represents [t͡ʃ] (if you dislike the RealElvish.net reference, PE19/92 says the same).

• certh #20 “kh”, /x/ That’s really just a consequence of the ch shenanigans above. Since cirth #20 is the mirrored version of cirth #18, it represents the spirant (aka fricative) corresponding to k, which is /x/.

Lammengollon (talk) 16:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for an admirably clear explanation of a complex subject. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]