RSS Feed
Sep 7

ámman îar

Posted on Tuesday, September 7, 2010 in Award, Conlangers, Conlanging

As many of you may be aware, David J. Peterson has posthumously awarded his annual ~:D Smiley Award to David Bell’s Tolkien-inspired conlang ámman îar. Being that we just commemorated the anniversary of Prof. Tolkien’s death, it seemed appropriate on this blog to also highlight the work of David Bell.

I had been dimly aware of ámman îar for some time, but the Smiley Award got me to take another look at it. Evidently, previous looks were cursory at best. I had no idea of the depth of detail that had been included. One page that caught my eye this time was the script which David Bell created for his language. Many conlangers are familiar with Tengwar clones. Bell’s is definitely not a clone but rather a well-thought-out evolution of the scripts of Middle-earth into a cursive form. At first glance, his tal-eglar looks like cursive letters in any Roman-script alphabet. However, on closer inspection, they are firmly based in the tradition of the script of Feanor.

The Smiley Award write-up does a great job of highlighting some of the finer points of Bell’s creation, but to truly appreciate it, one needs to delve deeply into his web site, now preserved at graywizard.conlang.org. You will not be disappointed.

(For past Smiley Award winners, click here)