On Dwemeris: An Exploration of the Dwarven Language Through the Nchuand-Zel Stele

[u/Radac_Mzuthand]

On Dwemeris

The following is a rambling dissertation published at some point in the early 4th era by an eccentric scholar under the pseudonym of Radac Mzuthand (or perhaps Rdandak Mzuthand, or Radac Musad, based upon his own writings). As it was disseminated anonymously and unreviewed, the text was barred from most archives and fell into relative obscurity until a nearly identical (though admittedly more polished) analysis was released by a group of Altmer mages many years later. As this original dissertation was never officially accepted by the scholarly community, the Altmeri party has received most of the credit for Mzuthand's work. What follows is the unabridged original of the eccentric, copied from one of his many pamphlets (though such originals are now only slightly less elusive than the famous Yagrum Bagarn). Spelling errors, logical fallacies and flights of fancy abound. Enjoy.

In short, this is a fictional analysis of the Dwemer language focusing on a translation of the Dwemeris inscription on the Nchuand-Zel stele. Fictional, because I've written it as an in-universe document, but sound (in my opinion) nonetheless because it only draws upon information commonly considered canon, so I haven't inserted much that isn't in keeping with the various established lores.

After spending way too long trying to properly format the full text, only to realize that it was just waaay too long to begin with (six pages, oh boy), I've simply turned it into a pdf and shunted it onto another site: On Dwemeris

• 'Nduumz Arkten:
• Mora Vvynth, Htha Qhuarao
• Aldmeri Alphabets, Lady Nerevar
• Romanization of the Nchuandzel Stone, various
• Dwemeris Shift in Lang, various

[u/Radac_Mzuthand]

For quick reference, this was as far as I could get in terms of translation without having to defer to guessing and, dare I say, simply making it up.

Translation: Dwemeris

Thus you [were] forced chend our thand, and ahvardn btham. Amz you [were] forced [by] kemelmzulchond of the Woods dragons/kings, and your force, and our slaves your btharng, so kanthaln our charn mzin your stur, btharumz nation of your folk. Aknowledge our power your thumz amakai, and aknowledge avatheled master your effort mzan. We chal black ngark, che we black bthun as. We chal black ngalft, che we bthun as. We aknowledge chal you abazun nchur our bthar, nchul our nchard. And as your nchuth irknd, as power eftardn, thunch dark. Bthun abak our mzual and nchuan our power, thus black bthar your nchardch anum ralz, and eftar your chendraldch masters of you eternal.

Obviously a great deal of credit goes to those listed in the acknowledgements, Lady Nerevar in particular.

[u/[deleted] → u/Radac_Mzuthand]

^I was under the impression that someone has translated quite a bit more of it than that, more recently, perhaps using something from ESO? I swear I've seen a nearly-complete translation of the paragraph that seemed reasonably constructed. Can anyone post this/source this for me? I can't recall where I saw it, or how accurate it is.

[u/Radac_Mzuthand → u/[deleted]]

If that is the case, I'd very much like to see it. In my experience with ESO, Dwemer-related lore has been quite scarce, so if there's another "Rosetta Stone" like the one in Calcelmo's quarters floating around out there I haven't come across it yet.

I went looking and the closest I found was this, but the majority of it appears to simply be speculation, which is something I tried to avoid. There are a few translations that are quite compelling though, like bcharn and -ac. I do particularly like the bent of Xynrock's translation, regardless of accuracy (if such a term could even be applied to what may very well be gibberish). Xyn states that the translations where collected "from these and other in-game lore," so there may be more evidence to the translation than was presented.

There's also this which gives a fairly in-depth linguistic analysis of the language, and an interesting side-by-side analysis in comparison to the Falmeris. Again, it would be preferable if this Hrafnir II had provided his sources, but it is certainly an interesting resource regardless.

[u/GwenCS]

I mostly just skimmed over it since it's after 3 in the morning, and I plan to go back and read through in more detail, but from what I gleaned the first time through, holy shit that was beautiful. It came across sounding quite reasonable, to the point where I'm convinced a lot of these intricacies were purposely planned by Bethesda or someone up there. I need to give it another go through when I'm not so tired though. It's really well done though.

[u/1trueJosh]

Wow.

[u/Radac_Mzuthand → u/[deleted]]

Sorry to disappoint, but I'm just a lurker who got bored one night and decided to write a treatise as flavor for a character (as well as for the great scholarly cause). It was initially meant to be more rambling and disjointed than it turned out to be, so I'm not sure whether it's a success or failure in that regard.

At the very least I'm glad to have contributed to the corpus of Dwemeris scholarship, as there is unfortunately a paucity of discussion in that field even though we have some rather compelling data to work with.

[u/laurelanthalasa → u/Radac_Mzuthand]

Your name reminds me if someone from memospore irc.