What was the dominant writing system in Middle-earth?

[Huinesoron]

It occurs to me that the one non-Dwarvish Westron Tengwa example we have is the 'G for grand' early on in FotR. And... it actually looks really weird. My redrawing:



Look at that squat little thing! It's nothing like your classic 'ungwe', and doubly nothing like the delicately flowing Ring inscription. With the stem bent under like that, and the thick lines and rounded strokes, it looks almost like a Hobbit itself - short and portly, just wanting to sit down in the sun.

Perhaps Frodo's 'um nope can't read it' response to the Ring is similar to how we might look at Cyrillic: a lot of the letters are similar, but some are pretty weird (you've got a B with a hook, a backwards N, an upside-down L...), and if you interpret them as your usual alphabet, you wind up with nonsense. "I cannot read the fiery letters" indeed. But, as Gandalf points out, they are Latin - sorry, Elvish - letters, though in an old hand.

I think the Mazarbul passage agrees with this: the two alphabets in use in Middle-earth are Elvish and Dwarvish, sometimes referred to as 'letters' and 'runes'. This still doesn't explain how the Hobbits can tell an 'elf-rune' G from a 'dwarf-rune' G - they're the same letter, and you'd expect them to see far more dwarf-marks coming through the Shire. Perhaps the decorative dots around Gandalf's signature on the letter at the Pony are also on his fireworks, and mark it as 'elvish'? Dots all over the place characterise the now-extinct Gondolinic runes, and it's conceivable the design feature might have been retained.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

(the BofM facsimile after all should have been in Westron, not English!)

I would give my metaphorical right arm to live in a world where we had a multi-page passage of Westron, even if it was only written in Cirth and Tengwar!

hS