I recently visited New York City’s Morgen Library exclusive exhibit on J.R.R. Tolkien. When I stumbled upon an original manuscript of The King’s Letter, transcribed into Tengwar by Tolkien himself, I was met with a surprise. The first surprise was that the widely accepted text that we study contained subtle differences compared to the original text. My transliteration would be, punctuation and all: “Elessar telcontar: aragorn arathornion edhelharn anglennatha ivaranduiniant [written as though one word] erin dolothen ethuil, egor ben genediad drannail erin gwirith edwen, ar ennas aníra i aran Gondor ar Arnor ar hîr imbair [written as one word] annui suilannad mhellyn ín phain. Edregol (here underlined) e aníra tírad icherdir [written as one word] Perhael (here underlined), i sennui panthael (here underlined) estathar aen, condir idrann (written as one word); [the following names are all underlined] ar meril bess dín; ar elanor, meril, glorfinniel, eirien sellath dín ar iorhael, gelir, cordof, baravorn ionnath dín. [unreadable text of about four words written here]. A pherhael ar am meril suilad uin aran o Minas Tirith nelchaenen ned Echuir. Elvish numbers are not my expertise, but it is clear that a date is written in small letters at the very end of this. The biggest discovery was found to the left of the text, whereupon the same document contained Tolkien’s writing the English translation of the text, albeit written in Tengwar. TOLKIEN HIMSELF translated “Nelchaenen” as “TWENTY-THIRD!!!” Gasps all around! It does not translate as the commonly-thought “thirtieth” or even the “thirty-first” that I had initially proposed. I have also seen transliterations say “nelchaenen uin echuir” and “nelchaenen en echuir”, but never Tolkien’s actual “nelchaenen ned echuir”. One might argue that Tolkien had different versions of this document with different words, but the beauty and time taken into this document and the fact that it was a first-hand account, make me convinced that I should follow this. I will receive backlash from many of you, but I ask you to kindly consider my findings. Hopefully my staring at the document for about an hour, blocking the view of many other visitors, will not go to waste. Please discuss.
MAJOR UPDATE on "The King's Letter"
No update here. These (including Tolkien's Tengwar writings and his translations) were already published in the 9th volume of the History of Middle-earth, "Sauron Defeated", between pages 128 & 131. Also the letter has three versions, but here is the reason behind the confusion:
First version's Sindarin:
[...] suilad uin aran o Minas Tirith nelchaenen uin Echuir.
First version's English:
[...] King's greeting from Minas Tirith, the thirty-first day of the Stirring, being the twenty-third of February in their reckoning.
In other words, the Sindarin writing does not have the additional bit from the English one. Besides, we have more than enough evidence to support this already existing evidence: nel(edh) means three, cae(n) (which was later updated to pae(n)) means "ten", so "nelchaen... = 3x10=30", and Echuir means "Stirring".
You do not sound convinced. I should add that the third version does not even mention the "thirty-first day of the Stirring" part in the English writing, in fact they are quite different:
Third version Sindarin: [...] suilad uin aran o Minas Tirith nelchaenen ned Echuir [...]
Third version English: [...] From Minas Tirith, the twenty-third of February 6341 [= 1436]
So the English version does not mention the "greeting from the king" either.
I am convinced. It is just hard when you are the top Elvish expert in your vicinity and then all of a sudden you are not when you connect with beautiful people on communities such as this. I hope that it understandable. I am very experienced when it comes to first-hand translations, but clearly you are far more experienced when it comes to a collective virtual study of the language. Anyway, at least it was a great experience and I got to translate amother Tolkien document first-hand. I hope all of us get to at some point.
This exhibit is still in New York City until May and is moving to Paris next. Highly recommended!
My only quirk was that, while the curators provided Elvish translations for the names of the sections within the exhibits on all of the signs, said translations were either just English in Tengwar or clearly done through Yandex. An example of this would be "I Perian" as opposed to "I Berian". I am correct that "I Perian" with the lack of lenition is inappropriate?
Going back to the basic questions. I know I am fluent in Sindarin and yet I am really doubting myself now....
Unfortunately, I think that your doubting yourself is very much on point. Because the first rule of thumb when it comes to Tolkien's languages is to understand that no one neither is nor can be "fluent" in either Quenya or Sindarin, not even with a lot of fan extensions in mind. We simply lack too much information, and although Tolkien's notes are still being published, I doubt that we will ever know enough to become fluent.
That brings me to another important point: As Tolkien's notes are still being published, we keep learning that either our theories (which we use to "fill in the blanks" to a degree) are wrong, or Tolkien changed his mind on what he himself used at some point. In other words, any courses or lessons that fail to incorporate all of the information from the newest publication (and all previous ones) become partially or fully obsolete.
So, for example, even if a person used to be very knowledgeable with Sindarin before 2007, we would have a hard time acknowledging that today, as we now know a lot more. As for your question, yes, it should be "I Berian".