How to read One Ring inscription?

Question

The following inscription appears on the One Ring in The Fellowship of the Ring book:

Which in Black Speech can be written down as:

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,

Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

However, the inscription is using different letters. I've checked Tengwar, but I can't find any of the words (e.g. ash, nazg, etc.).

How should the inscription be read exactly, in other words, how it's transformed from the above fiery letters into latin letters?

Answer 1

You are likely having a hard time reading these tengwar because of three big problems:

1. the style itself is such that the tengwar are slanted and written calligraphically
2. the mode used to write them is unusual and not common for Elvish languages
3. there are no spaces between words!

The page linked should provide assistance; the issue is that the tengwar and tehtar behave (like in several modes) as in an abugida: the vowels are diacritics to the "host" consonants, and a null consonant is used for vowel-initial words (even when the words aren't separated by spaces).