Sarati alphabet

J.R.R. Tolkien created many languages throughout his life. He wrote in one of his letters that the tales of Middle-earth (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarilion) grew from these languages, rather than the languages being created for use in the stories.

Tolkien also created a number of different alphabets to write his languages - the Sarati alphabet only appears in a small number of inscriptions in the tales of Middle-earth.

Notable features

Written from left to right in vertical columns.
Vowel diacritics are written to left or right of the consonant letter - if they appear on the left, they come before the consonant, if they appear on the right, they come after the consonant. If they appear at the beginning of a word they are written with a special vowel holder.

Sarati alphabet

Consonants

Sarati consonants

Vowel diacritics

Sample text

Sample text in the Sarati alphabet

Source: http://at.mansbjorkman.net/sarati.htm

Tolkien's books in various languages
Books about Tolkien's invented languages

Links

Information about Sarati (includes a free font)
http://at.mansbjorkman.net/sarati.htm

Information on how Sarati can be used to write Quenya
http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/sarati.htm

Tolkien's Middle-earth alphabets, by Dan Smith
http://ring-lord.tripod.com/alpha.html

Hebrew modes for Sarati, by Yehuda Ronen
http://my.ort.org.il/tolkien/gandalf/ps/sarati.ps.gz

Sarati typewriter, by Ethan Deneault
http://www.steelangel.com/Sarati/SaratiMacros_v1.zip

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