A Guide To Dwemeris
EDIT: sorry about the frankly abject formatting in this post. I don't use Reddit. I hope it's at least still legible
Everyone was so nice about answering my questions on Tsaeci legs I decided to finally copy over my work on Calcelmo's stone.
Chun thuamer arkngd chend duathand, th ahvardn btham. >And so it was that your people were given passage to our steam gardens, and the protections of our power. (literally “protection of our mathematics”)
Amz thuamer ahrkanch kemelmzulchond aka Mora, th thuangz ahrk, th duum melz thuabtharng, th kanthaln duabcharn mzin thuastur, btharumz thua mer zel. >Many of your people had perished under the roaring, snow-throated kings of Mora, and your wills were broken, and we heard you, and sent our machines against your enemies, to thereby take you under.
Abakch duumarkng tuathumz amakai, th abakch avatheled kagr tuamkingth mzan. >Only by the grace of the Dwemer did your culture survive, and only by the fifteen-and-one tones did your new lives begin.
Du chal fahl ngark, che du fahl bthun ur. Du chal fahl ngalft, che du bthun ur. >We do not desire thanks, for we do not believe in it. We do not ask for gratitude, for we do not believe in it.
Du abak chal thu abazun nchur duabthar, nchul duanchard. >We only request you partake of the symbol of our bond, the fruit of the stones around us.
Th ur thuanchuth irknd, ur irkngth eftardn, thunch fahlz. >And as your vision clouds, as the darkness sets in, fear not.
Bthun abak dua mzual th nchuan duarkng, chun fahlbthar thuanchardch anum ralz, th eftar thuachendraldch kagren thua vanchningth. >Know only our mercy and the radiance of our affection, which unbinds your bones to the earth before, and sets your final path to the music of your new eternity.
official translation of calcelmo's stone
LEXICON:
(! = words whose definition i’m not confident in !! = in the official translation, ‘thuabtharng’ is translated as ‘we heard you’, referencing the dwemer hearing the falmer’s cries for help. however, ‘thua-’ is a prefix meaning ‘your’, implying that ‘btharng’ is a noun and a more literal translation would be ‘we heard your [thing that can be heard]’. i’m not sure what exactly ‘btharng’ is, so ‘cry for help’ is a guess.)
*abak: only
*abakch: only by
*abazun: partake
*ahrk (v.): broken/perished
*ahvardn: protection
*aka: king(s)
*amakai: survive
*amz: many
*-anch: ‘under’/because of
*angz (n.): will(s)
*anum: earth
*arkng (n.): affection, grace
*arkngd (v.): given
*avatheled: fifteen-and-one (golden?)
*bcharn: machines
*bthar (n. + v.): bond / binds
*btham: power/mathematics
*!! btharng: cries for help
*btharumz: to thereby
*bthun (v.): believe/know
*chal (v.): desire/request
*che: ‘for’/because
*chend (n.): passage
*! Chun: ‘and so it was that’/’which’ (it seems to be a bit of a declaration; ‘chun ’ = ‘it is so, that , by an implied or stated decision’)
*Du: we
*dua(-): our
*duum: we/’the Dwemer’
*eftar (v.): sets (as in, ‘sets a path’)
*eftardn: sets in
*! fahl: negates a verb. (’chal fahl’ = ‘we do not ask’, ‘fahl bthun’ = ‘we do not believe’, etc)
*fahlz: verb negation, in command form. (’thunch fahlz’ = ‘fear not’)
*fahlbthar (v.): unbinds
*-ingth (adj., suffix): new
*irknd (v.): clouds/darkens
*irkngth (n.): darkness
*kagr: tones
*kagren: music
*kanthaln (v.): sent
*kemelmzulchond (adj.): roaring snow-throated
*melz: heard
*Mora: Atmora
*mer: people
*mzan: begin
*mzin: against
*mzual: mercy
*nchard stones
*nchardch: bones (perhaps essence/body?)
*nchuan: radiance
*nchul: fruit
*nchur: symbol
*nchuth: vision
*ngalft (n.): gratitude, thankfulness
*ngark (v.): thanks
*!ralz: before
*-raldch: final
*stur: enemies
*th: and
*thand: ‘steam-gardens’/halls/strongholds
*thu: you
*thua(-): your
*thumz: culture
*thunch (v.): fear
*! ur: it/while/is (this seems to be a particle that’s inserted into a sentence to reference an ongoing occurrence. in the text it’s used both as ‘it’ (in ‘we do not believe in it’) and ‘as’ (in ‘as your vision clouds, as darkness sets in’). it could be a particle that indicates when one statement can be explained by a previously stated one, but that seems needlessly complicated…)
*vanch: eternity
*zel (v.): take under
UNTRANSLATED WORDS (From Stronghold Names)
*Aleft
*Alftand
*Avanchn
*Bthalft
*Damz
*Dumz
*Eft
*Mzahnch
*Mzinch
*Mzuleft
*Mzulft
*Nchuand
*Rald
*Thamz
SENTENCE STRUCTURE:
*Dwemeris sentence structure is almost identical to Aldmeris/English. It is, however, simpler. Dwemer seem to favor brevity and leave a lot of things up to implication. Keep this in mind.
NOUNS:
*Possessions are shown with the pronouns ‘dua’ (1st person plural) and ‘thua’ (2nd person plural)– these may be either attached to the noun as a prefix or left as separate. there are no articles equivalent to ‘of’ to show possession between nouns.
*Relationships between nouns is implied rather than outright stated. Usually if two nouns are placed next to each other, an 'of' is implied. 'kagren irkngth' is literally "music darkness" but translates to "music of darkness".
*Alternatively, placing one noun next to another can apparently imply that one noun is describing the other. Hence "kemelmzulchond aka Mora" meaning "roaring snow-throated kings of Mora." However, it's also possible that the Dwemer were saying "you were killed by the roaring snow-throats OF the kings of Mora", so take this one with a grain of salt.
ADJECTIVES:
*Adjectives take the form of suffixes and are attached to the end of the noun they modify. If thand is a stronghold, thandingth is a new stronghold.
VERBS:
*As far as I can work out, verbs are just stuck in as is, exactly where you’d expect them to be stuck in English. I have strong suspicions that verb tense and use of ‘duum/thua’ vs ‘dua/tua’ are related, but more evidence is needed that this is the case. I can't find any signs of conjugation for tense otherwise. Since the Dwemer favor implications, it could be that there is none.
*Verbs are negated by attaching the word fahl. this can either be attached to the verb as a prefix, as is the case in fahlbthar ‘unbinds’, or it can remain on its own as in chal fahl ‘ask not’.
*It's possible that the suffix -z denotes a command, but I'm not convinced of this, and there are inconsistencies.
OBSERVATIONS AND THEORIES:
*To elaborate on verb tense: I'll be frank with you, I lost my notes on this, and looking at it again I cannot work out my reasoning. I honestly cannot work out the rules behind using tua or thua.
*There may be grammatical explanations for why certain words are affixes in some cases but whole words in others
*There may be a morphological explanation for the similarities between certain verb-noun pairs (irkngd ‘darkens’ vs irkngth ‘darkness’, arkng ‘affection’ vs arkngd ‘to give’).
*I have no idea what ‘ur’ is doing
My girlfriend @rushmovingpictures u/karoldagoth suggested that the Dwemer have a base-5 numerical system, just as the d’ni of the myst games do. The translation of ‘kagren’ to ‘music’ is interesting. it may be that ‘kagrenac’ is a name version of ‘kagren aka’ meaning ‘music king’. along this line, ‘dumac’ could be ‘duum aka’ or ‘Dwemer king’. As with all things, this needs more evidence
*The fact that they've obviously made a coherent conlang strongly suggests we’re going to see more of the dwemer in future TES games. They did make dovahzul for Skyrim, after all…
*I went through and translated Stronghold names too, and among other things found that the strongholds in Hammerfell and its surrounding regions was markedly different to the Dwemeris listed here. It's possible that the Rourken clan spoke their own dialect of it. A more interesting question for me is whether the ESO devs are actually using the Dwemeris conlang. The existence of "Nchu Duabthar Threshold" would suggest this if not for the fact that they could have lifted the sentence "Nchur duabthar" straight from the stone and deleted an r.
Most of my notes are handwritten, but if anyone wanted to see them I'd be willing to type them up. I hope this was an interesting read. And if anyone has any more info on Dwemeris-- words, translations, etc-- I'd be eternally grateful if you shared. Ngark!