Was someone trying to tell me I mispronounced “scadutree” or did I have to learn that from a TikTok comment?
Fire ring‘S Shadow of the Earth Tree DLC introduces consumables called Scadutree Fragments. These are found at Places of Mercy in the Land of Shadow and are used to power up your character.
“That’s a silly looking word,” I thought when I first read it and mentally pronounced it “skad-oo-tree.”
But the word “scadu” derives from the Old English “sceadu”, and should be pronounced more like “shadu”, or, you know, “shadow”. Shadow tree. This information comes from desperate linguistics students and history lovers from all over the internet, including Reddit, XAnd the comments on our own TiKTok page.
This should not really come as a surprise. Fire ring has long used Old English and Middle English as well as Welsh and Irish words that Americans have never learned to pronounce. I certainly breathed a sigh of relief when certified Irishman Cian Maher did us Americans a service by tweet the correct pronunciation from the Siofra River in the Lands Between before I ever had to say the word out loud.
This will blow the minds of all non-Irish Elden Ring players: Siofra is pronounced Sheef-rah
– Cian Maher (@cianmaher0) March 8, 2022
The dedication to including Celtic languages like Welsh and Irish in the translations of FromSoft games is really cool. Over decades of English colonization These languages were suppressed, often bannedand are still considered endangered.
Old and Middle English words like “scadu” and “gaol” come from a different language family, but it’s always exciting to learn how to avoid embarrassing myself when speaking.
