When I first received myDROP x Lord of the Ringskeyboard , it was one of those software that you occur home to after a trip : a delightful surprise , and one I had been looking forward to since I had first harmonise to drop a line a review article of the newLord of the Rings particular edition . I debated between theElvishand theDwarvish , and finally decided that despite how much I loved the instance on theDwarvishkeyboard(a interpretation of the room access to Moria ) , I was really an Elf Boy at heart , and bespeak that version for reassessment .
I do in no sentence set it up . Sure , I had just come off an international flight three hours beforehand , but I figured why not , let ’s getcrack - a - lackin . I immediately replaced some of the green keycaps with the additional orange caps ( thank you , YouTube , for the helpful tutorial which generally boil down to “ the keycaps will pop off before you may break them , so grab a pry and just go for it ” ) . I plug everything in , and immediately start typing away .
All was well . I summoned no evil shades from eld retiring , the Valar stay in the Undying Lands , all in Númenórean B. B. King remained undisturbed , truly it seemed perfect . The tippy tappies were tip - tapping , and for a full 12 minute I stay on delighted , so proud of with this neat piddling keyboard that was esthetically pleasing , gave me so much room and allow me to drop a line chop-chop and with the inscrutable - seated satisfaction that come from hearing keycaps go clicky - clicky .
Photo: io9 | Linda Codega
The DROP x Lord of the Rings keyboard also has some cunning little supernumerary — an illustration of the twin trees of Valinor over the arrow key , a humiliated Narsil on the enter key , the One Ring on the command key , the eye of Sauron on the the escape key — charming additions that made my little nerd heart go pitter - patter as I , wondrous besotted with the beautiful pile green base , ivory headstone , bright orangish additions , saw nothing amiss .
I was blind by a combination of nostalgia and feeling like a professional writer , with my big keyboard that demanded tending and focus to write on . Every word , every letter , need to be pressed down , not just tapped , and I wassail in this sense of mightiness and control , neglect the darkness that grew in a solid ground far to the eastward . I had draw a blank how much I enjoyed the way that mechanical keyboards feel . I ’ve never possess a mechanical keyboard , at least not since my family unit computer back in the other aughts , and while I was still in my post - travel stage I did n’t notice what was ripe in front of my eyes . Yet , in the darkness of my office , with the backlights off , the shadows waited .
In the stale morning after receive this delicious little thing , this wonderful piece of engineering , I discover something blow over strange . First , last night , I had notice that the function key fruit were presented F # , using the commonly - accepted Tengwar for F ( formen ) and the subsequent Elvish numeral . This originally assured me that all was well with my cute minuscule keyboard . ( A fun fact ! elfish math is develop on a base-12 system , which is reflected in the mathematical function Florida key . ) What I did n’t notice the night before was that the act name directly below the function words did not agree to the Tengwar numerical organisation , and were altogether different symbol . I hesitate . I checked the F cay .
Entry for nerds only, I’m so sorryImage: J.R.R. Tolkien
The F key , which has both the latinate and the Tengwar legends print on the detonating gadget , display the latin “ f ” alongside the Tengwar letter anca , which transcribe as the voice valar fricative “ ɣ ” or “ gh”—a digram that does not exist in Modern English , and is definitely not the letter formen that the keyboard used to precede the numbers on the function key . For the bounteous language nerds , I desire to say that there is another Tengwar missive , unquë , the labiovalar nasal consonant “ gh , ” which we do use in English ( Hugh)—but no matter , this is not the Tengwa formen . I pull up a Sindarin translator ( some of the keycaps had Sindarin phrases , so I assumed the keyboard would use the Sindarin - Tengwar transliteration ) and to my develop dismay I realized … none of these Tengwa legends matched the Latin keycaps .
Yes , the vowels in Sindarin are mostly indicated by graphenes that adjust the orthoepy of the win phoneme letter , but by and large , you could imitate a one to one transliteration , or , at the very least make an try . Also , if you wanted to write in the Beleriand style of Sindarin ( which is completely useless , even moreso than writing in a fabricated language might be in the first property , reckon Beleriand fell into the sea at the end of the First Age ) , you could habituate letters as vowels and neglect graphenes entirely . But besides the fact that Beleriand - style Sindarin is again , perfectly without a usecase , I roll in the hay little dots and swirlies and will not give them up .
This keyboard , for all its delicious presence , its charming mein , its wonderful sound and well - translated Sindarin set phrase , ultimately fails in what should be the canonical consideration of this keyboard : to match up similar speech sound within phonetic alphabets . While the form of the keycaps seems , at first coup d’oeil , to be a entirely random assortment of letters and sound , I attempt to make sense of it . It take some excavation , but at long last , I realized … this was a keyboard assort according to the sound series of each individual missive , as delineate by J.R.R. Tolkien in his account of Quenyan syntax . If you were n’t off the deep end of Tolkien ’s collection of Middle - earth language already , brace yourselves .
I do really love this packaging, it’s quite charming.Photo: io9 | Linda Codega
Above you may see a chart of how to group the case-by-case letter of Tengwar according to the glottal sounds they make , which are contemplate in the anatomy of the letter themselves . The first strait - consideration are divided up in each newspaper column , which , when letters are write downwards , are ring témar . In curt :
Tincotéma : dentalsounds such as /t/ , /d/ , /n/
Parmatéma : labial sound such as /p/ , /b/ , /m/ , /f/
Calmatéma : velar strait such as /k/ , /g/
Quessetéma : labiovelar sounds such as /kw/ , gw/ , /ñw/
Tyelpetéma : palatal sounds such as /sh/ , /j/
Additionally , looking at the rows , you could see the témar bilk against the “ manner of articulatio , ” called tyeller .
serial 1 : voiceless plosives such as /p/ , /t/ , /k/
Series 2 : voiced plosives such as /b/ , /d/ , /g/
Series 3 : voiceless fricatives such as /f/ , /sh/
Series 4 : voiced fricatives /v/ , /ð/ , /ɣ/
serial 5 : nasals such as /n/ , /m/
Series 6 : approximants
So , expect at DROP ’s keyboard it seem that the first row ( which would typically set about with a tilde or dash ) starts with the vowel control symbol ( a straight line over which the vowel indicant can be draw ) , and then continue down the tincotéma column for the first six letters . The first quarrel then continue in variety of a random assortment of extra sounds – the seven corresponds to the romen , eight to the silme , and nine to the hyarmen Tengwar . The 2nd wrangle of alphabetic character starts likewise , go down the parmatema column and include , once again , a rather random categorization of additional sound , none of which correspond to any of the English legends . This pass again for the third and quaternary row , which are both filled up with the extra letter of the alphabet in the bare keys after the six Tengwa from each glottal strait .
So I estimate out why the keyboard is arranged this elbow room — mostly — but it still does n’t make sentience . Why structure the letters to align with the constructed classification of the phonic equipment failure of the Tengwar alphabet , a item possibly three the great unwashed will point out , and not align the Tengwar to the QWERTY keyboard ? The QWERTY keyboard is , after all , not an alphabetised keyboard ; why then did these keycaps come , more or less , alphabetized harmonise to the Tengwar ?
I look up with my colleagueFlorence Ionover on the tech side of Gizmodo . She ’s been doing keyboard reviews for years , and serve me figure out precisely what to do for this one ( within my limited cognition of such things ) and how to try out everything out . What Ion also told me was that mass - bring on usage keyboards have led to a declivity in quality for fandom die - hards . When the hobby was low and the barrier for incoming higher , custom keycapshad to be crowdfunded via a mass preorder / buy - in , but this mean that the keycaps produced were of a much high quality . While these keycaps are clear of a perfectly all right quality , the thematic clarity of them is not state well . DROP has n’t let their production slip , but the fact is that this keyboard is — at least to me as a die - laborious language lover — aesthetically incorrect .
How could you fix it ? There is an upshot of distance , the master Tengwar first principle includes twenty - four letters , plus an extra eight symbols for more nuanced diphthongs and distinctions that only a man like Tolkien would feel the need to identify within an ABC . As an example , the difference of opinion between the “ n ” in nigh and the “ nj ” in new is reflected in Tengwar , with n as in nigh represent by the numen letter , and nj as ñoldo . However , it ’s deserving noting that numen and the ñoldo are literally revoke character , so feasibly these two could have been illustrated on a single keycap . There are heap of these that are identifiable if one had just taken the clock time to go through and line up a few key similarities . If this was truly meant to be a usable Tengwar keyboard , there are options for space - saving within the keyspace provided , especially consider that there are some punctuations that English use that have never been record in Sindarin or Quenya .
So what I have is a phenomenal little keyboard that is delicious to use and cute to have on my desk , but if I were to attempt to transliterate anything from English into its phonic match in Sindarin , I would have to go through a whole song and dance to assay to feel the temar and teyeller , endeavor to apply a chart to find the correct glyph on my keyboard , and then figure out whatever English letter in any given font corresponds to the Tengwar I ’ve found on my chart , rather than just referencing my keyboard itself . I would be better served creating a glyph mathematical function on my own that corresponds to this setup rather than attempt to go through three layers of version .
I ’m so sorry that I ’m like this , I really am . I just wanted a transliteral Elvish keyboard , and what I have is an expressed thesis of Tolkien ’s constructed Elvish spoken language . I know it ’s only the well-off root done well , but there is a part of me that remains annoyed . There is a version of this keyboard that might live in another timeline that is groundbreaking and cunning , use both the Tengwar and Latin glyph to make a useable Elvish keyboard that you could use to compose in Sindarin , should you have the alt / command control to adjust the vowels or indicate whether you want the numen - n or the ñoldo - n. We could have had it all .
I mentioned that this keyboard comes in Dwarvish — or Khudzul , if you ’re being Tolkien about it — and I rue to inform you at first glance that it does not appear as if the Cirth letters run along up with any approximate latinate transliteration either . But Khudzul does have 50 Cirth , so the phonetics might have been a little skullduggery . I wo n’t get into a breakdown of the Kudzul keyboard here , as I ’ve already run wildly obsessive enough .
Essentially , this cunning small clicky - clacky mechanical keyboard is great for anyone who desires the elfish aesthetic , with no path to use the keyboard efficiently to imitate Sindarin , either in translation or transliteration . The salt in the injury is the Sindarin printed on the translated keycaps like home , goal , delete , and insert . I did n’t go through all of them , but I clean out some that showed the width of their rightness and wrongness . The Sindarin word bâr for is used for home , which is correct . However , they printed the Sindarin word meth on the end keycap , which is incorrect because shabu is a noun and not a verb ! The Sindarin verb for end is a transitive prefix tel- or something like metta , which is read closer to ‘ end ’ . Another example is the insert key which reads , in Sindarin ‘ nest ’ but whose Sindarin letter correlate to no Sindarin Holy Writ , as far as I can tell . So it seems like we have some correct words , some faulty form , and some keycaps that just have a phonic substitution .
It is , however , somewhat well made ( I did notice a small morsel of breakup between the alloy soma and the cover , but it ’s modest ) , and has a bunch of cunning additions in different colors and fun designs . I received the standard version ( with both the Latin and the Tengwar legend ) but I ’ve requested the hardcore interpretation to see if I can programme this keyboard to spell in a transliterative Sindarin – we’ll see when that gets here . But at long last , this elfish interpretation of the Drop ENTR keyboard is dainty . I like it , I ’m perish to keep using it . It does what it ’s presuppose to do . It ’s a great starter keyboard for a neophyte like me , but I weep for the keyboard I could have had .
Various Lord of the Rings keyboards , include Elvish , Dwarvish , and Black Tongue ( Quenya but worse ) are available fromDROP .
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