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The content of Oath of Fëanor was merged into Fëanor on 29 May 2008. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.
Is that IPA correct?Halbared (talk) 10:48, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
I don't know if there's a source where Tolkien talks about pronouncing Fëanor specificially. What's there seems reasonable to me. Generally, vowels in Quenya are short and there are no dipthongs. Sennalen (talk) 13:37, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you on clarifying the diphthong for me. The umlaut, would this separate the 'f' and the 'e'?Halbared (talk) 20:36, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
The diaresis (umaut) is a decorative optional reminder not to make a dipthong or a silent vowel. I was overgeneralizing that there are no dipthongs, but ea is never a dipthong. Here's more: http://tolklang.quettar.org/pronguide.htmlSennalen (talk) 20:48, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
Ta, sure, I did check about the dipthongs and understood that you meant 'in this case' that there was no dipthong. I checked about the umlaut usage in English and German, with respect to English usage, but I see now Umlaut (linguistics) and Diaeresis (diacritic) have different pages. After looking at the Diaeresis page, it still makes sense to me for the break, but after briefly skimming that most useful link about Quenya pronunciation, I see it might not be. It is a most useful link that I was looking for, thank you. Do you know of any audio links where Tolkien speaks the name, again, thank you for pointing out the above.Halbared (talk) 15:42, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
... which recording mainly shows how rapidly and indistinctly Tolkien spoke... but he pronounces the second word, laurië, with a diaeresis, if a remarkably quick and weak one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:57, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
It is (2026-02-19), but the form Fëanor is Sindarin. The page has the correct Quenya pronunciation. But in Quenya his name is Fëanáro /fe.a.ˈnaː.ro/ [fɛäˈnäːrɔ], and in Sindarin the pronunciation is /fe.a.nor/ [fe̞äno̞r].
Diaereses in Tolkien's languages have no effect on pronunciation (in ea and oa and ie), they just remind English speakers that ea and oa and ie are not diphthongs and final e is not silent. In Appendix E Tolkien implicitly (but clearly) gives the vowels as [ä e̞ i o̞ u], with no quality difference for long vowels, but for Quenya he says that é and ó are "tenser and closer", so Quenya has [ä äː ɛ eː i iː ɔ oː u uː]. It is assumed that /a/ is central /ä/, but it could be back /ɑ/ as implied by his example of English "father". <f> is clearly [f] (it might be /ɸ/ in older Quenya and Vanyarin), <n> is clearly [n] (I assume that it is dental [n̪] before /t/ and /d/ which I assume are dental because Primitive Elvish *tʰ became [θ] and d became [ð] in Sindarin.) And <r> is [r] because he said it is "trilled in all positions". Also he describe all the languages as having Latin's penultimate stress rule, though there seems to be a secondary stress rule and a rule about -iëo that I don't know, and there's probably an exception where elided words keep their stress (lúmenn' should be stressed on the last syllable). ~2026-11264-31 (talk) 01:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
Tolkien says (iirc) that Fëanor is a compromise between Fëanáro and a pure Sindarin form Faenor. —Antonissimo (talk) 04:40, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
