Chun thuamer arkngd chend duathand, th ahvardn btham.
Amz thuamer ahrkanch kemelmzulchond aka Mora, th thuangz ahrk, th duum melz thuabtharng, th kanthaln duabcharn mzin thuastur, btharumz thua mer zel. Abakch duumarkng tuathumz amakai, th abakch avatheled kagr tuamkingth mzan. Du chal fahl ngark, che du fahl bthun ur. Du chal fahl ngalft, che du bthun ur. Du abak chal thu abazun nchur duabthar, nchul duanchard. Th ur thuanchuth irknd, ur irkngth eftardn, thunch fahlz. Bthun abak dua mzual th nchuan duarkng, chun fahlbthar thuanchardch anum ralz, th eftar thuachendraldch kagren thua vanchningth.

ye sa sou meldi calne tarn va molagnensali ye trumbi nou bala.
ilpen av sou meldi nagaiale as guntumnia spantelepelaelia arani morae
ye sou liebali racurane ye nu rautane sye ye nu hautalle nou buroi
gune sou gravuloi sa metane sye garlis frey as gondra doemera tarcel
lane sou agea silya nu hecta sou arcten rias nu nemalanta ge nu hecta sou epe
gandra rias ne nemelauta ge nu frey sepe sye arcta varlor denai
cullei noue staneiaye ry sou alasil auta ry loria shenta abagaiavoy
malautavoy fey nou darre ye alata rou malae asma maraga sou anyamis
av serven ye getheng sou wend riarilia vey emeratu sou oia besia

And your people driven CALNE pass into our Halls of Fire, and TRUMBI our power.
ILPEN of yours driven NAGAIALE by GUNTUMNIA SPANTELEPELAELIA kings of the wood, and your LIE-stones RACURANE, and you RAUTANE SYE, and you shall become our slaves, GUNE your people’s GRAVULOI. METANE SYE GARLIS FREY, by GONDRA DOEMERA TARCEL LANE your wisdom SILYA. You HECTA your ARCTEN, RIAS you NEMALANTA GE. You HECTA your EPE Gifts, RIAS you NEMELAUTA GE. You FREY SEPE SYE acknowledge lower-cast DENAI CULLEI our STANEIA. And as your ALASIL AUTA, as darkness comes forbidding. High-AUTAVOY FEY our DARRE, and ALATA ROU high, by what MARAGA your life of SERVEN, and GETHENG your WEND RIARILIA VEY guiding your eternal BESIA.

– UESP Wiki (See: Falmer, Dwemer, and Ayleid Languages if you need references)

I’m posting this a bit early since I have a dental appointment at the asscrack of dawn today, and likely won’t feel up to reviewing it for a final time prior to posting.

I’ve been waiting for more intelligent and experienced people than me to give us a better basis for Dwemeris, or anything from Bethesda that might give us a better clue. The best we got is the “Rosetta Stone” from Markarth that translated Dwemer into Falmer.. Unfortunately, I suspect it’s going to be the best we can get, unless Elder Scrolls Online includes new lore about the Dwemer. The passages above is English transliteration of that stone.

The above was lifted quite directly from the UESP article for the Falmer language and was written by the talented people there. However, I’m copying it only as a reference because this post is dealing with an analysis of this passage, and my attempt at actually translating the Dwemeric language directly into English. If you’re thinking this has to do with the Kenzeft Project, you’re probably right. Anyway, my use of the translation is educational.

I like to think I have some experience with translation and languages, I mean, it was what I wanted to do and Foreign Language was the major I was attempting to gain a degree in through college. I took Japanese and French, picked up the common Latin roots of English and French, and learned a little bit of Russian and German from the other students who attended the language labs there. Still, those were well documented and thoroughly translatable languages and I had plenty of resources to fall back on. Dwemeris is a made up language created by people who love to keep things a mystery, and of which we have only limited information. Definitely, it’s going to be a challenge, and I’m probably going to be wrong on more than one account. Regardless, here goes!

> By the way, if you’re a lore nerd… no, I’m not going to use “Ayleidoon” to refer to the Ayleid language because I think it sounds rather stupid, and Ayleid is enough of a chore to just type out.

WARNING: THIS POST IS FULL OF REASONED OUT THEORY. THIS SHOULD NOT GO ON A WIKI.

To start with, I’m going to break the translation up into sentences in order to focus better on the different words and the complexities of the sentence. I’m just hoping to find out that Dwemeris is not based on Japanese, since in Japanese you can have the subject declared several paragraphs back and not see a reference word for ages after. Guessing that Dwemer is based on the unknown Aldmeris, it still should not be totally dissimilar from the other meric languages.

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Dwemer: Chun thuamer arkngd chend duathand, th ahvardn btham.

Falmer: ye sa sou meldi calne tarn va molagnensali, ye trumbi nou bala.

Translation: And your people driven CALNE pass into our Halls of Fire, and TRUMBI our power.

Well, to start with… “YE SA” is actually “AND SO” in English, but for some reason or another someone missed translating “SA”, so the actual translation would be:

“And so your people driven CALNE pass into our Halls of Fire, and TRUMBI our power.”

A minor nitpick, but I like having precision to work with.

“TH” seems to translate roughly into “YE,” except in the case of “Chun” which could be a possible compound word involving “TH,” with the “TH” going through a consonant shift to “CH.” It could also be a special chase appearing at the beginning of the word. Possibly a combination of “YE SA.” We see “CHUN” later on in the passage.

Supposition: “chun: = “ye sa” = “and so”

“THUA” seems to appear every place in the translation where “you” or “your” appears. See below for more info, as I haven’t been writing this translation in one swoop, but going over it in several revisions.

Supposition: “thua” = you

Supposition: “thuamer” = “your people”

Despite the very well done translation of the Falmer language using similar Ayleid words, I do not think “meldi” in this case means “driven,” but rather “exiled,” as like the similar Ayleid word “mathmeldi.” “CALNE” may be a modifier of “MELDI.” Guessing that “CALNE” is the Falmer word for the Ayleid “MATH” as in “MATHMELDI.”  “Mathmeldi” in English lit. means “home drive.” And thus:

“And so your exiled people pass into our Hallls-.”

An alternate translation I propose is that it may mean “violently,” but I’d stake my money on the “exiled” version.

“And so your people driven violently pass into our Halls-“

Supposition: “calne” = “home”

Supposition: “meldi calne” = “exiled”

Wait wait wait wait.

“ye sa sou meldi calne”

“And your people driven CALNE”

…

This is mistranslated, I’m sure of it.

Where is “people” in the Falmeric translation? Sure, we see “thuamer” in the Dwemeric… but “mer” is suspiciously absent from the Falmer.

However… in the Ayleid/Valenwood variant, “che” means “people” as an alternate word.

What if “calne” is the Falmer equivalent to “che?”

That would make it:

“And so your exiled people”

And that would make a lot more sense, especially if the Falmer variant of “meldi” didn’t just mean “driven” but also “exiled” in context. It’s a different language, it doesn’t necessarily need a modifier like Ayleid does in “mathmeldi.”

Supposition: “calne” = “people”

Tackling the “molagnensali” part of the Dwemer text… Based on the previous observations, I wouldn’t be surprised if “dua” meant “our” and “thand” meaning “hall.” We see “dua” several times in the passage appearing whenever “nou” appears.

“Thand” appears in the name of at least two Dwemer cities, “Irkngthand,” “Arkngthand,” and may possibly be part of “Alftand.” The Ayleid tendency in Cyrodiil was to name their cities “Hall of X” or “X Hall” may be similar. The general concsensus derived from lore is that Dwemeric was descended from Aldmeric through the Ayleids, though I have my own theory about the origins of the Dwemer… Anyway, at least we know this: the elven peoples tend to be quite literal in naming their cities, including the Dunmer.

As a result, I can only assume “arkngd” means equivalent to “meldi” And there’s a very good chance of it, it could make a bit of sense.

But wait, if it goes that way, “duathand” is totally missing an important part where the Falmer wrote “molagnensali.” Where’s the “Fire” in the Dwemeric passage? Sure, you can suppose that “duathand” means “fire hall” but that doesn’t make sense as we see “dua” appearing where “our” and “nou” in the other translations are. I’m a bit reluctant to say that “thand” means “firehall.”

Making a supposition here, I think Molagnen doesn’t necessarily mean “fire,” as just “molag” does, but considering that Dwemer used steam extensively, it may mean “Fire water halls” or “steam halls.” “NEN” in Aylied has no definition listed, but does exist as a word. But what if it meant “Water?” Which would make a hell of a lot of sense. I mean, Halls of Fire is apt, but Halls of Steam would be hitting a Dwemer city on the nose. Anyway, if “arkngd” is a compound word referring to “exiled” and the unknown “CALNE” means “people,” I would think “chend” may be “steam” or “fire.” The word may actually be “chendduathand” or “chend” by itself may be a modifier.

To support the idea that “chend” refers to heat, fire, steam, something similar to that, I’m taking into consideration the Dwemer city “Mzanchend” in Morrowind located in the “Molag” Amur region. “Bthanchend“, another city in Morrowind, appears behind the Ghost Fence at the foot of Dagoth Ur near Maar Gan, a definitely volcanic area. I do not think that “chend” in this case is referring to “tarn va” or “pass into.” “Pass into” may be part of “arkngd,” or it might not even be in the Dwemer translation at all.

Supposition 1: “chend” = “molag” = “fire”

Supposition 2: “chend” = “nen” = “water/steam” AND/OR “nen” = “water”

Supposition 3: “chend” = “fire water/hot steam/steam”

Of course, the chance that “arkngd” means “exiled” by itself,  may mean “chend” means “pass into” and “dua thand” means “our fire/steam hall.” Still, the fact remains that the Falmer translation has a significantly different grammar and the translations tend to be much longer than the original Dwemer. It may also indicate an tendency of the Falmer to write more flowery prose than the Dwemer. The Dwemer may mean something far more sensible and forthright than the Falmer, paralleling the look of their version of the Aldmeri script:

“And so your exiled people came into our halls, and marveled at our power.”

“Ahvardn” or “btham” may be “our power.” The other obviously translates into “trumbi,” however as of yet we have no translation for the Falmer word “trumbi.” The most sensical translation for “trumbi” is “feel,” so that would become “and feel our power.” Or, “Sense,” “discover,” “marveled” as alternatives. Or, going on a limb here, it may be as simple as “tremble.” As in “tremble at our power.” Assuming that Dwemer grammar is still at least somewhat similar to Falmer at the time this passage was written, I’m willing to bet that it’s btham that means “our power” and “ahvardn” that means “trumbi.”

As we do not see “dua” or any of the other versions of it in this sentence, yet since we see “nou” I can only assume that one of these words refers directly to something the Dwemer often think of to have a dedicated word to it. “Our power” could also be an extremely loose translation into Falmer of a concept the Dwemer have about themselves that is difficult to comprehend.

Another thought occurs to me that “dua” appearing early may also have been enough. In some languages, if you refer to a pronoun sometimes in the next part of the sentence you don’t have to say it again. English is extremely redundant with its pronouns, even compared to languages in the same family. It’s possible that Dwemeric grammar may be that way, as I’ve found that “intelligent” languages tend to leave unnecessary words out- English is an exception because it lends to precision (if you use it right.)  So that “nou” appearing in the Falmeric translation may just be their adapting the grammar.

Supposition: “btham” = “bala” = “power”

Supposition: “ahvardn” = “trumbi”

As this post seems to be getting rather wordy, and I like to break larger things up into smaller bits, I will continue this translation in the next part.

Conclusions:

	Ayleid	Falmer	Dwemer
exiled	mathmeldi	meldi	arkngd
and so	ye sa	ye sa	chun
you	sou	sou	thua
people	che/mer	calne	mer
steam	molagnen?	molagnen	chend
OR pass into	tarn va	tarn va	chend
power	bala	bala	btham
?	?	trumbi	ahvardn

Stay Tuned for Part 2: And I Thought Japanese Was Difficult.