Lore:Dwemer Language

The Dwemer Language, Dwemeris,  or Old Dwarvish  is the language once spoken by the  . This article is an attempt to summarize all that is known about it.

Overview

In comparison to the  , very little is known about the language of the Dwemer. Most of it survives as names of various  , often constructed from a limited number of roots connected together (for example  ,  ,  ). The trademark features of Dwemeris are compound words, often quite long, and consonant clusters containing as many as five consonants.

Dwemer texts are written in the Dwemer Alphabet. For more information, see the main article on the  .

The only known consistent piece of Dwemeris is present on  , which features a text written both in the   language (which is very similar or even identical to Ayleidoon) and the Dwemer language, acting as the Elder Scrolls equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. Even so, the somewhat limited knowledge of Ayleidoon was not initially enough to translate the Falmeri text accurately enough to use it to analyze the Dwemer text, but this changed when the official translation was published by Bethesda.

The Dwemer language has a possessive form similar to that seen in other elven languages. For example, "Dwemeri" means "of the Dwemer",  while "Arkthzandi" means "of [the stronghold of]  ". 

Words and Phrases

The list contains words explicitly mentioned and translated in various sources, as well as the word roots from Calcelmo's Stone which appear on it at least twice.


Analysis of Calcelmo's Stone

Below is an attempt to decipher the Dwemer text from Calcelmo's Stone - based on the official translation given by Kurt Kuhlmann.  Note that due to the lack of knowledge of Dwemer grammar or how exactly the compound words are constructed, it might not be very accurate.



















It can be seen that the possessive pronouns are usually written together with nouns (thua-mer for "your people", dua-bthar for "our bond"). Another noticeable feature is the lack of prepositions. There also doesn't seem to be any consistent inflection.

When combined with other sources, the meanings of many words seem to be rather vague, with the actual meaning depending on the context. For example zel is said to mean "city"  but on Calcelmo's Stone it's translated as "under" in "...to take your people under" (which could be interpreted as "to take your people to our cities, to our domain"). In both cases the word seems to generally mean the domain of the Dwemer, or a Dwemer-inhabited area.

Similarly arkng[d] appears three times as "were given" (arkngd), "grace" (duum-arkng, "the grace of us" or "the grace of the Dwemer"), and "affection" (dua-arkng, "our affection"). It seems obvious that the word in general means giving, granting something, or the act of doing so.

Fahlbthar is translated as "unbind". This is more or less consistent with the word bthar also being translated as "allied"  or "bond" (dua-bthar, "our bond") while fahl generally seems to denote a negation ("no", "not", "un-"). Thus, bthar may generally mean "allied" or "bound". Compare the names of the Dwemer ruins   ("not allied"? "unbound"?) on   and   ("symbol of our bond"?) in  .

Similarly, the name of the ruins of   could mean "radiant city". A similar analysis could be performed for many more ruin names.

References