What Elder Scrolls language is this?

[Daric Gaersmith]

Does anybody know what language these letters are from? This is a randomly constructed word, using some of the letters from the Word Wall in the 6th Chapter of the Black Book Waking Dreams, the Word Wall that gives the third word of the Dragon Aspect shout, but there are strange, moving words behind the Dragon Language text, written in a language that I don't recognize.

If these are identified as an existing language from the Elder Scrolls games, and if there is a translation available, I'll say no more about it. But if not, if no one knows what those words say on that Word Wall, nor what language they are written in, then I'm keen to start looking into this further, and try to work out what that Word Wall actually says, other than the Dragon Language, which has already been translated.

[BetaB17]

I'm far from being an expert, but at first glance it seems to be some form of dragonic, corrupted or unknown. Dragons have a tendency to add dots with their dew claw but consist of three marks, normally straight. But this is mostly wrong.. For what I'll guess, it's unique to Mora's realm and thus different than most deadric, much like in Elder's containing some unique glyphs. The curves though are very much interesting...

[Daric Gaersmith]

Thanks for the reply, BetaB17, I've also had a reply on the wiki from RobinHood70, who checked the Creation Kit for me, and found that the script on that Word Word is listed under a "Custom" language file, so nothing specific turned up there.

I created that sample above by importing bitmap screen-captures (from a video capture of the Word Wall in-game) into a font wrangling program, and then traced them manually, creating a Truetype font from them. Of course, at present I have no idea what each character represents, so the first one I came across became a capital A, and so on from there. Once I have captured every character shape, and recreated the original texts in order using the custom font, I can then start applying common linguistic and cryptographic tools, such as coincidence and frequency analysis. It will be interesting to see if I can crack this.

Here is an actual screen-capture from that Word Wall, so people can better see what I'm talking about...

[Avron the S'wit]

With just the way it's written, it doesn't look like anything I'm familiar with for Tamriel orthography. Considering that it appears on a Word Wall and process of elimination rules out Dwemer, which doesn't resemble that in construction (or use dots, except for the Falmer variety). Of course, there are things to take into consideration. The dragons certainly didn't write it: their claws couldn't perfect those curves, as the dragon alphabet is strict lines and dots, as would be appropriate for them. That would make it most likely human made, and then there's things to take into consideration, such as individual variations in penmanship, literacy competence, and what the heck they even used to put it on the wall in the first place. If you want to disregard those and just do a one-on-one correlation between what appears and the alphabets as we understand them, then it becomes very hard to guess. They have the same fluidness of the elder alphabet, but I wouldn't be so quick as to make the assumption that is strictly what it is.

Assuming it does mean anything, you'd have to look at it fully in context, meaning considering the environment it appears in, the lore surrounding the area and the peoples, and so forth, since language never exists on its own out of context. My guess is that it's just a randomly assembled inscription with no real alphabetic relex to compare it back to. Great find though! I'll have to go looking for it myself!

[swordsister]

Has anybody checked the Eye of Magnus yet? I think they pretty much match.

Check the image on the OP on this link. The topic is also interesting.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/ ... eculation/

[Avron the S'wit]

Oh, good find: they do match the ones on the Eye of Magnus:

Hidden:

Which would make it an alphabet we have not yet seen, or at least are not familiar with. (Edit: although that topic and I both seem to agree with the elder alphabet similarities.)

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Do they actually match those or are they similar?

Does any character on the former match any character on the latter? I've heard both arguments before. Some look pretty close to me but I dunno...

Something else to compare would be Shalidor's Insights.

Again, I'm not seeing anything I'd call perfect matches here, but I only glanced and I need to go to bed. Have fun with that.

You could also try comparing it to Akaviri script.

[swordsister]

Well now. Imagine the Eye being an Akaviri artifact. That'd be mindblowing.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

I think it's more likely that it's an artifact that predates the mortal races. It's possible their languages were based on it, though. At least some of the languages they use. It's an ancient and obscure artifact that we didn't actually learn much about in Skyrim. The Anuad teaches us that the Tsaesci share blood lineage with Tamrielic humans, though, which is why I mentioned their language. Some of the letters also look similar to me.

[BetaB17]

But then again all Language could share a common origin. So far we know elder and deadric are such, but what of aetherius? Eye of Magnus surely would support this and it is the realm of magic. Mora is deeply fascinated with all knowledge, so he's bound to have knowledge of this too. And we also know dragons and even dragonborn hold connections with an Aedra in particular >_> and one could say Dragon Aspect is the strongest shout by inherit rite.
I really don't know but it's just in a league of its own to me>_< but it's not hard to believe whatever it is, Mora sees it as a treasure worthy of the mightiest knowledge

[Mattbott]

i think it's Herma Mora's language, if you reason that his is the root of all (magical) knowledge it's reasonable to think that scholars and artificers from all ages have gained from association with him

so you could indeed find races using this script across time - the first dragonborn and the last were not the only ones to visit his realm or read the black books

[BetaB17]

Keep in mind, just as he gives knowledge he also collects. He is just a library of untold knowledge yet he is not the author. Even his most famed artifact is just a collection of the darkest secrets known or even an inch of knowledge that is the Elder Scrolls >_> which is even a great value to gods themselves(like Dagon). Mora is far from being the source of magic, yet Magnus is. He resides in aetherius, leaving behind his staff and I conclude that eye >_> Seeing as the wall shares many connections to the eye, which in turn holds connections to the scrolls, we can already conclude it's origins reside in a higher power.
How and why it came to Mora's possession, well he is one who loves to hoard knowledge..
Also I want to point something out, Oghma Infinium was written by Xarxes who used the knowledge by Mora. Who's to say Xarxes didn't trade something in return >_> like maybe that shout.. he was after all the scribe of Auri-El.
I do like the idea of this being the Aedra's equivalent to the deadric language..

[Mattbott]

no youre right, Mora is not the source of magic, i mean he's an ancient source of magical knowledge.. different things.

why can't he be the author though? most of his benches in his realm have quills and ink wells (and his tentacles hanging nearby) so i assumed (perhaps wrongly) writing is done there

weren't the black books written by him?

[BetaB17]

He may be the writer but not the creator of such thoughts. He just gathers, record, and sends forth. Nothing is really original. He is in some ways similar to Vile, making packs with the greedy but still gets what he desires regardless of how small. The Black Books are similar the scrolls in that they can be from the past and the future, yet the book itself is the power and not what is written. As for the quills in his realm, keep in mind alot of it is just in-game, but nomatter how you look at it, it still is a library infested with his influence. He is just the keeper and the seekers(or lost fools) are his readers >_> though his personal tomes of knowledge are his creations, I doubt we would ever know who really wrote the Black Books.
~Lets end this b4 it spirals off topic more.

[Mattbott]

i totally agree he didnt create the thoughts, i'm suggesting he devised the language they have been written in - which is the topic of the post

Spoiler:

could this language be Moras version of the dewey system except it references magical formulae/ideas rather than cataloging titles and authors - you certainly need to already have profound knowledge to benefit from it (whether its inherent cos you are the dovahkiin, or are an anciant telvanni mage lord

but that's fine - so even if he didnt create the language it may be that he is the only being who still knows its true origins

seems to me that Mora is a bit like the Yog Sothoth of TES - he's a conduit of sorts though he doesn't actually do anything as such

[Dunmerdude]

i totally agree he didnt create the thoughts, i'm suggesting he devised the language they have been written in - which is the topic of the post

Spoiler:

could this language be Moras version of the dewey system except it references magical formulae/ideas rather than cataloging titles and authors - you certainly need to already have profound knowledge to benefit from it (whether its inherent cos you are the dovahkiin, or are an anciant telvanni mage lord

but that's fine - so even if he didnt create the language it may be that he is the only being who still knows its true origins

seems to me that Mora is a bit like the Yog Sothoth of TES - he's a conduit of sorts though he doesn't actually do anything as such

The Psijic Order probably has it's origin and translation key somewhere in their archives, the Gods would know about it, and who knows who else. Somebody gave it to HM, probably in return for some other information. Mora would like you to think he knows everything, but he's only passing on knowledge, he's basically running the Pyramid Scheme equivalent to Vile's loan sharking.

Now on to the Topic:

I'd conjecture that what we are looking at is THE alphabet, Elnofey, which by being passed over and over through time and cultures split off into many branches. I don't have Dragonborn, but have you tried matching the Dragon Runes with the unknown script by character count? That might at least tell us if we should read this as single letters, in words, in sentences or with each character being a word on its own. It doesn't look anything like Dragon to me, and it has only a superficial resemblance to the Elnofey of the Elves. Some of the characters do look like backwards Elder Script.

Going slightly back off topic:

For those interested Shalidor's Insights is the start of what seems to be two paragraphs of an Encyclopedia entry on Alduin in barely legible English broken up in the middle by the first paragraph copied in Elder.

(Alduin /World Eater/ : Alduin is the *dia(?) manifestation of Akatosh, and only superficially resembles his messengers in the Nine Divines(?), for example Alduin's(?) *igns the world eater(????) _____ from(?) ____ destroy/despise(?) him as the(?) horrible(?), *ing ____ when/who(?) destroyed the ____ world is _____ once more.(???)

I'll type out my interpretation of the second paragraph if you lot are interested. Over all paragraph one describes him and paragraph two seems to be the start of an account of a conflict between two people, one of which was a king that one of them involved Alduin in

"Seeing the _____ of King K***housish(?) Bisky(?) summoned the ghost(?) of(?) Alduin(?), Time Eater...

and so on.

[swordsister]

That text is from story of Wulfharth.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Five_Song ... _Wulfharth

[Eltee]

Wow. Great job, everyone! I know I couldn't have made most of these connections, hehe.

The text does look so very similar to both Akavir and Elder, but I don't think I see any plausible direct matches. :/


I tried to find the Elder glyphs that were the closest, but they were just too dissimilar.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Yeah. Like I said, they use a similar writing style but nothing directly matches. One may have evolved from the other. It's likely the Eye contains a very ancient type of writing, possibly used by the gods that other alphabets evolved from.

[Daric Gaersmith]

Thanks to the image posted above by Avron the S'wit, I have been able to identify some phrases in this language that are common to both the Eye of Magnus and the Diiv Word Wall in Apocrypha. You have to be able to mentally rotate them, but they are the same.

I still have no idea what it all means, if anything at all, but it is interesting to see that Bethesda used the same phrases on the Eye as they did on the Word Wall. Anyone care to do the same comparison for the Black Books?

[Pilaf The Defiler]

That's a very good find. Unfortunately, since we currently have no way of knowing what it actually translates to or if it actually translates into anything that makes sense we seem to have hit another brick wall.

[Daric Gaersmith]

That is true Pilaf, however it does seem to indicate that this is not just some random scribble. What are the chances that Bethesda made up some random scribble for the Eye of Mangus, curving it into the shape of a triangle, and then later straightened out that same scribble for use on the Diiv Word Wall of Apocrypha for Dragonborn? I doubt it, personally. If it were just random scribble it would seem to be much easier to make more random scribble for Dragonborn, and then random chance and luck would be involved in any two glyphs being placed together the same way in both. No, this is evidence of intent, I believe.

Those who have worked on the Elder language of the Elder Scrolls, has there been any such pattern match in them? If so, then maybe the "intent" I have identified above is just more of the same intent to confuse and to provide an air of mystique. If not, then perhaps this new language may prove to be more translatable than Elder is.

[Mickey]

The fact that an entire line of script is reused backwards would lead me to believe....

1. It's not a real language or....
2. It's the most amazing language ever, with words and whole sentences being coherent forwards, backwards, or inverted.

[Mattbott]

i hope the devs spend as much time thinking about this stuff as we do, and don't just re-use textures in different places cos of time/personnel resource restraints lol

[Ilaro]

The fact that an entire line of script is reused backwards would lead me to believe....

1. It's not a real language or....
2. It's the most amazing language ever, with words and whole sentences being coherent forwards, backwards, or inverted.

The Eye of Magnus is a round object: http://uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-npc-Tolfdir_02.jpg
The sentence isn't even backwards. You can just turn it over, you don't need a mirror... So mabey you need to turn the Eye upside down to read this sentence.