On The Origin Of Human Culture And Language, Volume 1

Dispatched by Jacques-Etienne Duceppe, scholar and fellow of the Camlorn Heritage Society, 19th of Sun's Dusk, in the year 216 of the Fourth Era.

During my time at the University of Camlorn, a prestigious institution of well-learned experts seeking the advance of knowledge across all planes of study, my cohorts and I put a little investment into researching the basis of the language we speak- that is, the Tamrielic common tongue. Widely spoken across every province (though the An-Xileel have discouraged its use in favor of Jel across Black Marsh and occupied Morrowind), it is the undisputed lingua franca and typically the first language of every denizen on the continent.

Our findings were largely inconclusive. No serious effort was put into discovering the roots of our language. We teenagers had better things to waste our time with, and simply asking around among unconcerned professors got us nowhere.

However, about a decade after my departure from the University and the start of my life as part of the upper class bourgeoisie in High Rock, I was called to attention by a good friend of mine; Laurent Moreau, Chairman of the Camlorn Heritage Society, of which I have been a dedicated member for seven years. For those interested, it is a branch of the greater Imperial Institute for Cultural Studies and Heritage Appreciation, which can be joined by any person across the continent.

Laurent Moreau had stumbled upon a certain realization that he could not believe hadn't been made sooner, concerning the origin of the Tamrielic tongue and the basis for Nirnish cultures as a whole.

His first question to me concerned the nature of Breton culture and the unique aspect of our names, dialects and traditions. As Bretons, we have been born and raised into the culture- one which has roots in the most obscure places.

He asked to me: what sets firstly our names apart from other cultures? He took, for example, my name, or at least the first half of it. Jacques. If one were to transcribe it according to pronunciation, it would be more like Jok with a soft 'j'. And why the 'cque' combination, especially the 'qu'? Why is the 's' silent? Not only did that beg the question of why the letter Q exists, as well as its rule of being followed by a U, but also where our culture came from.

While there is a significant divide between High Rock Breton culture and that of the Orc-influenced Reachmen, it's generally accepted that our roots lay in two peoples principally; the Nedes of Atmora, and the Aldmer, hence the term 'manmer', more of a racist epithet nowadays.

However, if one were to look into both Nedic and Aldmeri culture, they would find little explanation or correlation that could justify the present existence of Breton culture. For example, there were no Aldmer or even Altmer today who had names in any way similar to, say, Jean-Marie Artur Patrice de Lusignan. They had simpler titles, like Phynaster, Syrabane, Torinaan. How could you 'bretonize' a name like Torinaan?

There is little to be found in Nedic naming convention either. Early folk heroes like Ysgramor and Hjalti point only to the eventual culmination of the Nords. I will cover the Nordic question in a more in-depth manner on some other time, but I'm going to be focusing on Breton and associated cultures in this specific volume.

In the absence of logical and reasonable explanation in the two root cultures of the Breton race, it leaves only one possible alternative: the presence of a third, forgotten culture.

If one were to take the many aspects of Breton culture that stood out from its ethnic heritage, you could find evidence of an entirely separate language from both Nedic, Aldmeris and even the supposed root language, Ehlnofex, which is as of yet widely regarded as the basis of all Tamrielic languages.

This suggests an apparent lack of connection in language structure to Ehlnofex, while they share a similar construction. Add in archaic commontongue words from Cyrodiilic history and we get a glimpse of a root language that certainly does not relate with the Elves.

For example, the Breton name Jean. Make the ‘J’ sound from a ‘dzh’ into a ‘Y’, and it’s pronounced exactly like the Nord name Jan. The shared traits of Nordic and Breton culture that don’t fit with Ehlnofex also are shown in Imperial society. A man named Marcus in Bravil may meet a Nord named Mark and a Breton named Marc.

Imperial culture also has its fair share of anomalies. The Penitus Oculatus, the Emperor’s personal guard, has a nonsensical name that doesn’t seem to mean anything, yet can’t be traced to any root language in Tamriel except similar words that appear with difference variations in Breton historical text. The word ‘penitus’ may correspond to penitence, which has been noted in archaic Breton as ‘pénitent’, though it is unknown where the accent above the ‘e’ comes from.

Oculatus, when compared to other Imperial texts and their insignia, seems to suggest something to do with the eye, and this is backed up by a word that has appeared in otherwise untranslatable old Breton text: Oculatoire. Admittedly, “penitent eye” doesn’t seem like an awe-inspiring name for a security force, but the relation certainly is there, and with everything else it’s hard to believe the resemblance is purely coincidental.

All this evidence points toward the existence of a common root language for not only the common tongue, but also the old languages that it evolved from like Nordic, Bretonic and the Cyrodiilic dialects. For the sake of identification, I have labeled this unknown tongue Proto-Tamrielic, in relation to Ehlnofex. The presumed course of evolution for Proto-Tamrielic would be as a unified dialect that split when one group of men went to Atmora, another settled in Cyrodiil, and a third that somehow emerged in the region of High Rock. Such a route would challenge traditionally-held notions that Bretons evolve completely from Nords and Elves, and Ehlnofex being the root of all Tamrielic culture.

I have not mentioned the Redguards in this paper, because their culture is almost entirely unrelated to that of the Proto-Tamrielic group. They are men and today they speak common tongue, but that is about all they have in common. I do have an admitted ignorance in the way of Redguard culture, so if there are any correlations to be found by the reader, I encourage submission.

In the meantime, I will conduct further research into the ethno-linguistic background of human Tamrielic culture, and I encourage any fellow scholar to do the same. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye when one takes a closer look at the origin of man.