So, I've been checking on some things, and it turns out that a couple of the Quenya words in my tattoo designs were actually spelled wrong. The Quenya alphabet (which, incidentally, works in an entirely different manner than the alphabet of any Romance or Germanic language) has several very complicated rules that also happen to be rather arbitrary. It's a thing.

For example: two different characters for our letter "R," which are used in entirely different manners and are not, in fact, interchangeable. It's little things like that which make it a tricky language to use. Even for a linguistics student. Also irritating is the fact that one has to read very carefully to learn that the diaeresis, usually over the letter "E" when a quenya word is written with the latin alphabet, is NOT, in fact, an accent, but simply marks that the "e" should be pronounced separately from any other vowels, rather than as a diphthong. (i.e. in the word "fëa," meaning spirit, the diaeresis (two little dots above the "e") simply means that the letters "e" and "a" should be pronounced differently). Other accents actually change how the word is spelled. "Fëa" and "fea" mean the same thing. The diaeresis is simply a pronunciation aid.

Because I didn't actually pay close enough attention to these rules (though, to be fair, one has to look a little harder to find some of them), I have to change "Air" and "Darkness," which I wouldn't have changed (I like the designs) except for the fact that the words are spelled wrong. "Fire" is also spelled wrong, but I was going to change that anyway, because I really hate the design. "Water" and "Earth" I want to redo as well, because again, I hate the designs. I'm thinking that for the background for "Water," I'm going to use something similar to those old Japanese paintings with the giant waves in the sea, and for "Earth" I'm looking at a tree design similar to the White Tree emblem used in Lord of the Rings. "Light" is the only one I'm not going to change. And if anyone has an idea for a design for the "Spirit" tattoo, feel free to share, because I've got nothing.

Anyway, thanks for listening to all my grammatical ranting- I'm a child of several generations of teachers, and I'm a linguistics student. It all kind of comes with the territory. I really appreciate all the great feedback I've gotten on the tattoos so far. Thanks to all who have commented!