So after like, a million years, or just one, I’m getting back into fully figuring out what the Dwemeris means in the only translated passage we find in game.
th thuangz ahrk, th duum melz thuabtharng, th kanthaln duabcharn mzin thuastur,
ye sou liebali racurane, ye nu rautane sye, ye nu hautalle nou buroi
and your LIE-stones RACURANE, and you RAUTANE SYE, and you shall become our slaves,
Again, “th” appears where “and” is, and “thua” and again with the translation being “and your.” What in particular “ngz” means is unclear, but if the tradition is to combine “thua” with an object, “liebali” may be the translation for “ngz.” And actually, I think it may be “angz,” with a dropped vowel because it may not be needed with no meaning lost. Now, what if “liebali” meant “doom stone?” Clearly, “racu” is the same as in Ayleid which means “down” and I’m willing to bet that “racurane” is the Falmer version of “racuvar” in the past-tense.
“and your doom stones were cast down,”
Interestingly, “arhk” appears as it’s own word instead of a prefix and does not seem to mean”driven.” It could be a case for “arhk” to mean “your,” if it wasn’t for “thua” appearing in the next section of the sentence without “arhk,” and thua being in “thuastur” at the end.
Interestingly, “dua” shows again when “our” appears in the translation. Assuming that it is functioning a prefix possessive of the word to which it is attached, I can only assume (and hope) that bcharn is “slaves.” So “duabcharn” would literally mean “our slaves.” and that gives us some interesting grammar to work with as “thua” appears at the end of this section of the sentence prefixed to “stur.” That could mean “thuastur” = “you shall.”
Now this is sort of reminding me of the way Yoda speaks. “Through the Force, other things you will see.”
I’m beginning to think, at this point, that thua and dua both definitely are used as prefixes to nouns to mean a possessive.
btharumz thua mer zel.
GUNE your people’s GRAVULOI.
gune sou gravuloi
There’s not much here that we can do here, except GRAVULOI seems a little bit like an imperative version of a verb, If we take the Ayleid imperative suffix of “voy” and extrapolate that. Since we don’t have any actual Aldmeri to compare it with, Ayleid is the closest meric language that we have any sort of basis with.
Interestingly, “zel” may be the same word that appears in “Nchuand-Zel” and “Kagrenzel.” “Tel” in Dunmeri means “Tower.” “Fell” is a similar word meaning “City” that also appears in Dwemeris and may have a similar connection.
Also, “Gravia” in Ayleid means “ugly,” so I’m wondering if this sentence is giving an imperative to become “ugly” or a similar vein. Still, that doesn’t make much sense at all. Then, there are also instances of “-voy” in this passage, and while many languages in real life have different forms of imperative, I think this may possibly be a different form of modifier or just an entirely different noun/verb.
I find it interesting that “thua” and “mer” appears in the Dwemeri version, but only “sou” in the Falmeri.
Dwemer: Abakch duumarkng tuathumz amakai, th abakch avatheled kagr tuamkingth mzan.
Falmer: sa metane sye garlis frey, as gondra doemera tarcel lane sou agea silya.
Translation: METANE SYE GARLIS FREY, by GONDRA DOEMERA TARCEL LANE your wisdom SILYA.
This sentence has less translation than any, but one thing is clear, “your wisdom.” Considering that “tua” is prefixed to “mkingth,” I’m willing to believe that “mkingth,” at least as a compound particle, means “wisdom.” Although, I’m wondering if this passage wasn’t at least partially misspelled or mistranslated, because I see “tua” appear twice, but only one version of it is translated. “Tye” in Ayleid means “you” so I’m conjecturing that “SYE” is the Falmer version and “tua” is the same. Now, in Ayleid, “TYE” may be the object form of “you.” I’m not too sure of this as “SYE” appears above and not in the same context, and doesn’t seem likely.
So that would make the translation “METANE you GARLIS FREY.” “Garlas” in Ayleid is the closest to “Garlis,” however that means “cavern” and I’m not so sure that’s what they mean.
Again, “Th” appears, but this time the translation appears to be “by.” This shows another similarity between Dwemeri and Ayleid in that one particle has several different meanings. If the Dwemer were interested in efficiency in their language, it’s quite possible that one particle started to take on several different meanings separately, as well, the meaning being clear in the context. (This is somewhat how Japanese works.)
I’m positive I’ve seen the term “doemera” before though, and preeeetty sure that the “mer” refers to “mer” as in “people.” If “doe” is another version of “dua” that might make “doemera” “our people.” However, the Dwemer version doesn’t show any hint that this may be the case.
Silya may be a version of “Sila” in Ayleid, meaning “shines” or “to shine.” If it is a past tense, it could mean “shone.” “your wisdom shines.” Sort of makes sense…
Du chal fahlngark, che du fahl bthun ur.
nu hecta sou arcten, rias nu nemalanta ge.
You HECTA your ARCTEN, RIAS you NEMALANTA GE.
Now this is interesting. “Du” appears where “you” does, possibly indicating another state of “you.” “Thua/tua” seems to be predominantly a prefix, so this may be the non-possessive, second-person pronoun. It’s also similar to the Falmer/Ayleid “nu/ni” and one of the similarities Dwemeri still has with its cousins. “Duu” also appears aproximately where “SYE” does in the previous section.
Che is likewise interesting, appearing in the Dwemer script, as it is a Valenwood-Ayleid variant of “mer.”
ARCTEN could be a version of “Arcta” as in “Acknowledge” and may be more akin to “acknowledgement.” It likewise may be a version of “Arpen” which means “noble”
Looking over similar words to “rias,” I can’t wrap my head around anything but “ry” as the cousin to this. A thin limb, indeed, but if “rias” means “ry” and in English equals “as,” that would make it “You remember your acknowledgement, as you- SOMETHING.”
Breaking NEMALANTA down, it could be ne mala-nta, which is roughly equal to “never high” with some sort of modifier. It could be a compound of “mala”/”high” and “anda”/”long.”
I’m… sort of getting the impression it means “You remember your acknowledgements, and never rise again” or something along those lines.
Whew! That was a lot of work, but it’s been fun and interesting digging into made up languages like this. Someday, I really hope Bethesda fills out the languages of Tamriel and publishes a book or something on it. As of right now I do not know the existence of such a book, though I am aware of the places where you can learn the dragon language, which is kind of cool. There really should be something on the elven languages, though. The Elder Scrolls could be really great if Bethesda opened up the world like, say, Dungeons and Dragons did.