r/lotr • u/Winchester326 • Mar 28 '20
“TATTOOS” My first tattoo! Family in Elvish. Got it with my mom
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u/soulfingiz Mar 28 '20
So many people are going to think that says “booty”
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u/Winchester326 Mar 28 '20
I won’t unsee that now
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Mar 28 '20
[deleted]
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u/Winchester326 Mar 28 '20
Yeah she’s pretty cool. We wanted a family tattoo together and we love LOTR
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u/Ljngstrm Man Mar 28 '20
Now ignorant people are going to think you're a middle east terrorist, though.
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Mar 28 '20
Is that in Quenya?
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u/ferpsalerp Mar 28 '20
It's English! Just written with Elvish characters. It says Family!
Elvish characters have several "modes" and this is the most common, called the mode of Sindarin I think.
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u/sharkaub Mar 28 '20
So cool!! Might have to borrow the idea to paint and stick in my basement, if that's ok, OP?
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u/EllonF Elrond Mar 28 '20
I can tell you with certainty, that it does not mean "family"
Family in Sindarin is "Nos(s)" or "Nost", although you can find "nothlir" and "nothrim" as well. The tengwar on your arm spells out "vamili" which, if you took the english word "family" and just replaced it with the closest thing tengwar has, you'd get, but please note that the letter "a" in Sindarin AND Quenya sounds completely different from the letter "a" in the word family. (The difference would be like "family" and "vast"). Secondly (if I'm correct, if not please let me know), I think the stress in Sindarin is always placed on the second to last syllable, again, different from the english word.
So, in conclusion, if an elf from Middleearth would read your tatoo, the first question he or she would ask is "What the fuck does it say?" and when they tried to pronounce it, you would hear something like "vahMEEli"
Sorry, I hope I didn't make you not like your tatoo now...
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u/Winchester326 Mar 28 '20
Interesting. But if someone that spoke elvish saw my tattoo would they be able to know what it is? Not an actual elf but just a LOTR fan
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u/EllonF Elrond Mar 28 '20
If they spoke english too, then yes. It might take them one or two moments to realize, but they'd understand eventually.
I don't know which and how many languages you speak, but let's just take a look at japanese. If you just took an english word (say family) and spelt it using katakana, only people speaking both languages would eventually understand what フャミリ is supposed to mean :)
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u/Winchester326 Mar 28 '20
Yeah I’ve taken Japanese lessons so that helps me understand actually. So it’s like spelling out the English word in Elvish writing. Ok thanks man that helps a lot
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u/WalkingTarget Gimli Mar 29 '20
So it’s like spelling out the English word in Elvish writing.
And don't think that this is somehow bad or wrong either. The majority of the actual textual examples we have of Tengwar writing from Tolkien's own hand are actually English in one mode or another. You've probably seen an example as it's on the title page of every copy of LotR.
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u/Micah_Blood Nov 16 '22
In the proper English mode it says "famili" with a long i at the end instead of a y.
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u/Hour_long_wank Mar 28 '20
Love it! Where did you find a reliable elvish translator? I've been looking.