The Road Goes Ever OnSources
The homepage can be read in two invented scripts, as a small tribute. This page lists everything we used to make them, so you can check our work.
The tengwar and cirth scripts and the Sindarin and Khuzdul languages were created by J.R.R. Tolkien. See the note at the bottom of this page.
Elvish version
Headings and short lines are in Sindarin. Because Tolkien's Sindarin vocabulary is limited, most phrases are our own simple constructions from attested words (often called Neo-Sindarin). The longer paragraphs are English written with tengwar letters, a common convention among fans.
Word data comes from Eldamo, an Elvish lexicon by Paul Strack (CC BY 4.0). The codes in brackets are Eldamo's references to Tolkien's own writings.
| Phrase | Meaning | How we built it |
|---|---|---|
| Mae govannen! | Well met! | Attested greeting: mae govannen [LotR, Letters]. |
| I min bain | All the roads | Our construction: i “the” + men “road, way” [UT/280] in the plural min (see plural nouns) + pân “all” [SD/129], placed after the noun and mutated to bain as in Eldamo's example i edhil bain. |
| Pado, ar teitho i min. | Walk, and draw the roads. | Our construction: pad- “to step, walk” [PE17/34] (Eldamo marks the sense “walk” as uncertain) + ar “and” + teitha- “to write, draw” [LotR, PE17/43], both in the imperative. |
| Teitho i min | Draw the roads | As above. |
| Gonodo i min | Count the roads | Our construction: gonod- “to count (up)” [Ety], an older (Noldorin) word adapted for Neo-Sindarin, in the imperative. |
| Said | Private | Attested adjective: said “private, separate” [VT42/20]. |
Transcription into tengwar was generated with Glǽmscribe using its sindarin-tengwar-general_use mode for Sindarin and its english-tengwar-espeak mode for English.
Dwarvish version
Only a few dozen words of Khuzdul are known, so a real translation is not possible. The Dwarvish version is English written in cirth runes, with one Khuzdul phrase.
| Phrase | Meaning | How we built it |
|---|---|---|
| Baraz-nâla | Red path | Our construction: baraz “red, ruddy” + nâla “path, course” [PE17/37], with the adjective first as in the attested name Barazinbar “Redhorn” [LotR]. |
Transcription was generated with Glǽmscribe using its khuzdul-cirth-moria mode for Khuzdul and its english-cirth-espeak mode for English. We converted the result from Glǽmscribe's font layout to the code points of the Under-ConScript Unicode Registry (a long ā is written with its own rune instead of an accent).
Fonts and tools
| Name | Author | Licence | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alcarin Tengwar | Toshi Omagari | SIL Open Font License 1.1 | Tengwar font |
| Constructium | Kreative Software | SIL Open Font License 1.1 | Cirth font |
| Glǽmscribe 1.3.1 | Benjamin Babut (Talagan) | GNU AGPL 3.0 | Transcription, run once while building the site; no Glǽmscribe code runs on this page |
| eSpeak NG | eSpeak NG contributors | GNU GPL 3.0 | English pronunciation, used inside Glǽmscribe |
| Eldamo | Paul Strack | CC BY 4.0 | Sindarin and Khuzdul vocabulary and grammar |
| Under-ConScript Unicode Registry | Kreative Software, after the ConScript Unicode Registry | — | Character codes for tengwar and cirth |
Fonts are loaded from jsDelivr only when you switch script.
Spotted a mistake?
We are not linguists. If you know Sindarin or the cirth better than we do, write to support@roadgoesever.com and we will fix it.