elvish symbol for 9
 

we all know that the Fellowship actors have the elvish symbol for 9 tattooed somewhere, but I was wondering, what exactly is it? I remember seeing it before and have a vague idea what it looks like, but can't find the website now. does anyone know of a picture of it online? thanks!

If I am not mistaken... it's in the Appendixes in ROTK.

We could also check out Elijah's tattoo...

http://psy-strike.com/tat.jpg

If im not mistaken, that is not the elvish symbol for nine...firstly take a look at this page. You can see that the elvish symbol is very different.
Also have a look at this tatoo. Im not too sure which cast member owns this tattoo.
Sean Astin states that his tattoo says 'The Nine' (i think they are in the Fëanorian letters).
The hobbits tattoos are very odd, since they dont seem to say nine, but rather something else...'The nine' doesnt seem to be it either...very odd.

It is also quite possible that the tattoo-person botched the symbol . . . Storytelling time!!

A lady at a shop we go to wanted to get the Chinese character for 'Tranquility' tattoed somewhere on her, so she asked my mom to write the character for her. My mom did so, and a few weeks later, we went back to the store. The lady had gotten her tattoo done, but the character didn't say 'Tranquility'. Instead, the tattoo-person had made it into a character that didn't mean anything except to serve as a question word (a word you add to a sentence when you're asking a question).

So, yeah. That might have been what happened to the Fellowship cast, though I hope not.

[EDIT]Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't those letters on Elijah's tattoo look a lot like Hebrew letters?

[ January 23, 2003: Message edited by: Merri ]

elvish writing always reminds me of Hebrew writing. I suppose he has to get his insperstion from somewhere.

Does anyone know where the tatoos are? i know that Elijah woods is, well, look at the pic, and Orlando Blooms is on his wrist, but what about the rest?

very interesting! thanks for the pics and links and info!

I did some searching and found that Sean Astin's tattoo is on his ankle.

http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/graphics/elvishtatoo.jpg

the article that went with it said that Billy Boyd also got his tattoo on his ankle.

weird that the symbols on the tattoos don't look like the other symbol...

[ January 23, 2003: Message edited by: thalioniathiel ]

It's not the number "9", it's the number "nine."

"M"-- tengwar "n"
dot above --- "i"
dot below -- a following "e"

Ta-da! "Nine"! There's also another version of tengwar used where the vowels are actual letters--that's with the sword inscriptions and stuff in the movie--but this is the version that's on the ring. Remember seeing the three dots overtop some of the letters? That's "a". The "dash" is "e", and the curls that curl up and down are "u" and "o", respectively.

Cool, huh? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

-'Vana

P.S.

I always thought that tengwar looked arabic, but that's just me...

when you say the inscription of the ring is written in the same mode as the "nine" that has a secret spot on every LotR-characters body, it's not completely true. there are several modes to use the same signs, and the mode on the ring is like the Grey Elves (the Sindar) would write: Sindarin. the nine is written in the Quenya way (Noldor). the only big difference - apart from some changing sounds and secondary sounds - is that in Quenya you first write the tengwa (p, t, k, l) and then put the Tehta above, so it is read in an upward motion(each group of signs can be read as pe, te, ke, le). sindarin is the other way around: first the Tehta, and then you draw the tengwa beneath it (each group of signs can be read as ep, et, ek, el).


those who are interested in learning these characters, just go to http://www.sci.fi/~alboin/tengwartutorial.htm. the font can be found on http://www.acondia.com/tengwar_fonts/

Your not the only one who thinks so. Tengwar writing does look a lot like ancient babaloynian/assyrian script to me...

I was aware of the difference between "Sindarin" script and "Quenya" script, but thanks for clarifying anyway [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] I was using the example of the script on the ring to let people know it was in that "language"--IE, Tengwar--and to give them (IE, the inquiring minds) an example on how the vowels look. Thanks for getting more in-depth. Most people would be surprised that the cool curly-looking squiggles is an actual language that Tolkien painstakingly crafted. (Maybe not here, but I know in my area...)

Another good example for seeing Tengwar "in action" is to check out "The Letters of JRR Tolkien." He writes a pretty long message in two of the three forms of Tengwar (two kinds with vowels as symbols and one kind with vowels as letters) as well as in dwarvish runes. A pretty neat book to pick up, though I don't think there's a link that can be posted.

-'Vana

[ January 28, 2003: Message edited by: DaughterofVana ]

[ January 28, 2003: Message edited by: DaughterofVana ]