I don't know why there are two kinds of s's! What's the difference?
Original post: www.elfdict.com
<Súlë and Silmë>
www.tecendil.com This website is where I got the súlë from, (represented in English with the letter thorn 'þ').
I am trying to make a tattoo saying "breathe" in Quenya. That website is giving me multiple translations of 'breathe' and 'breath', and it has become even more confusing because its translation of the word "sule" (what I thought was just the name for their 's' character) is actually "breath". So the name for their letter 's' translates to "breath" or "spirit". Like, look at this: www.tecendil.com
<Breath>
Here's a copy and paste of that page:
"súle": QUENYA n. column, pillar
"þúle": QUENYA n. breath; spirit [stem: súli-]
"þúlë": QUENYA n. spirit [as exertion of will]; breath [stem: súli-]
So there's so much of a difference between the word "súle" and the word "þúle" that they are pronounced differently and need a separate character to differentiate between them so that they're not homophones?
But that's not the word that means just "breathe". It's a word I accidentally found by typing "sule" (the word for that 's') instead of "suya" (the word I found for "breathe"). That's getting off-topic.
<To Breathe>
Parf Edhellen translates "breathe" as súya. www.elfdict.com
However, this Tecendil website uses the súle form of 's' (represented by 'þ') to translate the word "to breathe" as "þúya". www.tecendil.com
So is it súya or þúya?
According to www.elfdict.com: "þúya", when entered into the search bar, doesn't match anything on Parf Edhellen.
According to www.tecendil.com: "suya", when entered into the search bar on Tecendil, is recognized and changed to "þúya", as if to say that the only way to write the sound "suya", meaning breathe, is to use the thorn (þ) representing the súle form of 's'.
<What Now?>
This is getting deep into phonetics and linguistics, and it's making me wish I could go back to school to get a linguistics degree, the way I wanted to when I was 14 and wanted to develop writing systems for unwritten tribal languages so that the Bible could be translated into their mother tongue...
I just want to know how the word "to breathe" is translated (I know it's "suya") and then how it is to be spelled, in Quenya script, so that I can tattoo it on my wrist to help me remember to breathe when I'm obsessing over details so much that I forget to take good, deep breaths.