

Archived from the original on 22 March 2022. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Berkeley, 1994. Semiotics Around the World: Synthesis in Diversity. "The Semiotics of the Writing Systems of Tolkien's Middle-earth". This makes Sarati an abugida with an inherent vowel of "a". When writing Quenya, the sign for "a" is usually omitted, as it is the most common vowel in Quenya.

Sarati was usually written top-to-bottom, but it could also be (and originally was) written left-to-right, or boustrophedon, going left and right alternately, like an ox pulling a plough back and forth in a field.

"Sarati" is the Quenya name for Rúmil's script. However, Tolkien sometimes called the writing system "The Tengwar of Rúmil", tengwar meaning "letters" in the Elvish language Quenya. It was he "who first achieved fitting signs for the recording of speech and song" The writing system is officially called Sarati as each letter of the script represents a "sarat". Known as the first writing system of Arda, Sarati was invented by the Ñoldorin chronicler Rúmil of Valinor in the Valian Year of 1179. It eventually developed into the Tengwar, supposedly created by Fëanor. The Sarati was Tolkien's first script for the Elves. In addition, there are some pre-Fëanorian variants including Falassin, Noriac, Banyaric, and Sinyatic, and some non-Middle-earth alphabets, in manuscripts from the 1920s, and a Goblin Alphabet used in The Father Christmas Letters.

