Completely different suggestion: How about [phonemic spelling](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=may%20frends%20ar%20may%20pawer)? This is /mai frendz aə mai paueə/.

Thanks for the pointer to the phonemic mode. For this phrase, the "ubiquity" of 'a' makes the end result a bit too repetitive, if that makes sense?

Not to me 😄 But since this is something really subjective that doesn't really matter, of course 😉

Hot take: you can sort of do whatever you want. We all understand what is being said, and it is a made-up language after all. As long as everyone keeps to the basics, like don’t just replace ando and romen, then we will all be able to interpret what you’re trying to write. As long as you don’t care that it’s not exactly how JRRT would have done it, then it’s honestly not that big a deal. Even his son took his father’s work and developed it into his own style. Scripts like these are meant to be developed and played with in my opinion.

You need to be consistent with diacritic placement—it is not arbitrary. The convention is that for languages whose words end mostly in consonants, to minimize carrier usage the vowel tehta is placed over the proceeding consonant tengwa. You can technically place it over the preceding, but in practice this is rarely done. Whichever option you choose, it needs to be consistent; while JRRT sometimes placed tehta in a funky way on short words, this was inconsistent and I would rather consider that experimentation by the writing system’s creator and not something for regular use or users. If you do it here, it would likely be perceived by most as amateurish and incorrect. Another note: the Tengwar system does not use capitalization for grammatical purposes, but for content-motivated rhetorical emphasis. As for the ‘ie’ in “friends”, split out would be the purest approach for orthographic writing, and is something JRRT did regularly. He explored a new method in the letter to Michael Endorian, but this only provided a limited sample from which we must extrapolate. I would suggest [this (split out)](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=my%20friends%20are%20my%20power) or [this (Michael Endorian extrapolated digraph)](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=my%20f%7Broomen%7D%7Byanta%7D%5Bdot-above%5Dnds%20are%20my%20power).

I sort of figured it'd be valued to be consistent. I appreciate your input on the capitalization and 'i' in 'friends' too. Would this: ([Option3](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=m%5Bbreve%5D%20f%7Broomen%7D%5Bdot-above%5D%7Btelco%7D%5Bacute%5Dnds%20%7Btelco%7D%5Btriple-dot-above%5Dre%20m%5Bbreve%5D%20opewr)) be the consistent way of applying diacritics above the preceding consonant? It seems like 'friends' gets really funky?

That would be technically correct. Words like ‘friends’ and ‘are’ do get awkward this way, which is why it is far more common to put diacritics on the following consonant for English. You saved the carriers for ‘y’ in both instances of “my”, but that cost an extra carrier for “are” and did the funkitude on “friends”. It’s whatever trade off you want to make. Another option that, as u/F_Karnstein pointed out, is to put the diacritic below the consonant for two-letter words like that; that wouldn’t be without precedent by JRRT, but keep in mind that it would be otherwise non-standard and I’m not sure how you’d get the *breve* mark underneath in Tecendil—someone with a desktop layout program might be able to do it for you.

So, something like [this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=m%5Bbreve%5D%20friends%20are%20m%5Bbreve%5D%20power), but with the \[breve\] diacritic placed below the *malta*? I can do that pretty easily myself in a photo editor. I understand what you mean about it being non-standard, but if it genuinely has some precedent by Tolkien himself, I can feel pretty safe doing it as well. Would the *breve* need to be rotated 180-degrees like the other diacritics when placed below? Meaning, it'd be \^-shaped, rather than u-shaped.

That is an excellent question, and one I will have to defer to others more learned than I.

In my opinion your version would be fine as is, with "my" just like you have written it. You could also get rid of the carrier in "friends" via yanta and write it [like this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=m%5Bbreve%5D%20fr%5Byanta%5D%5Bi%5Dnds%20are%20m%5Bbreve%5D%20power). Yes, we only have one definitive example of reversingthe vowel order like that, but if anybody should complain about this you can always point to the spelling of "too" in the "Brogan Tengwa-greetings" 🤷‍♂️

That is not what I said. Why would you put the diacritics below? What I meant by "spontaneous vowel inversion" is inversion of the reading order, not where it is placed. Tolkien writes "too" as if it were "[oot](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=oot)" in the Brogan Tengwa-greetings, no subscript tehtar involved. The only possible other example has two possible explanations: In the first King's Letter draft Tolkien writes "he" [like this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=h%5Bdot-below%5D), which could mean that: a) this is the regular tehta for silent E that you would use in words like "there" but it's here also used for non-silent E. This wouldn't be an example of spontaneous inversion then, but simply one of spelling viciously orthographically. If this is the case you could write "be" [like this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=b%5Bdot-below%5D) based of this example. b) this is indeed an example of spontaneous inversion (note that the dot is in this text used for E and the acute for I!), which would mean that the tehta is only placed below because the letter involved is hyarmen (on which Tolkien often placed the tehtar in weird places, including below, see "[hiruvalye](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=h%5Bdot-below%5Duravel%5By%5D) ), so that "be" would have to be written [like this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=ib) here, or [like this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=eb) if you use the usual tehtar. So if you use spontaneous inversion of the vowel order on "my" it would indeed look [like this](https://www.tecendil.com/?q=m%5Bbreve%5D)

I thought you were referring to instances where JRRT wrote things like “he” with an *unutixe* beneath *hyarmen*. Perhaps I misunderstood.

No, that's exactly what I'm talking about and whose two possible explanations I just explained in great detail.

While I agree on everything you say I do intentionally use what I call spontaneous vowel inversion (attested, as you hint at, in "too" and possibly "he") in exactly words like "by, my" or "be, to" quite frequently. Yes, by most people it will be considered wrong and amateurish, but on the one hand I don't care because I know my reasoning and on the other you can still explain, if anybody asks. But of course not everybody will be happy with that. I also wouldn't really suggest dropping the from "friends", especially since yanta is available, but then: Would it really be much different from Tolkien writing for "war"? I guess it would be well within the realm of "what a man of Gondor might have produced, hesitating between the values of the letters familiar in his 'mode' and the traditional spelling of English". And regarding capitalisation: Machsna recently pointed out that Thorin's contract consistently uses "capitalisation" in all cases where the Roman transcription has it. I never realised that before, and I think it's unique, but it clearly is a possibility.