We’ve all been saying it wrong: Elden Ring’s mysterious “Scadutree” isn’t pronounced “ska-doo-tree” as countless Tarnished have believed. Instead, this enigmatic word hails from Old English roots and should be spoken as “shadutree” – literally meaning “shadow tree.” This revelation not only changes how we say it but deepens the lore of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, connecting language and history in FromSoftware’s haunting world.
“That’s a silly-looking word,” I thought when I first read about them, mentally pronouncing it as “skad-oo-tree.”
But the word “scadu” is derived from the Old English “sceadu,” and should be pronounced more like “shadu,” or, you know, “shadow.” Shadow-tree. This information comes from distressed linguistics majors and history enthusiasts all over the internet, including Reddit, Twitter, and the comments of our own TiKTok page.
This shouldn’t exactly have come as a surprise. Elden Ring has long used Old and Middle English, as well as Welsh and Irish words that Americans never learned to pronounce. I certainly breathed a sigh of relief when certified Irishman Cian Maher did us yanks a service by Twitter of the Lands Between’s Siofra River before I ever had to say the word out loud.
The devotion to including Celtic languages like Welsh and Irish in translations of FromSoft games is genuinely cool. Over decades of English colonization these languages were repressed, often banned, and are still considered endangered.
Why have we all been saying ‘scadutree’ wrong in Elden Ring
We’ve all been saying “Scadutree” wrong in Elden Ring because the word is derived from Old English, where the “sc” consonant pair is pronounced as “sh,” not “sk.” The term “scadu” comes from the Old English “sceadu,” meaning “shade” or “shadow,” so the correct pronunciation is closer to “sha-doo-tree” or “shadow tree,” rather than the commonly mispronounced “ska-doo-tree.” This linguistic detail aligns with the DLC’s theme and subtitle, “Shadow of the Erdtree,” making the proper pronunciation both historically and thematically fitting.
How did Old English pronunciation influence our ‘scadutree’ mispronunciations
The Old English pronunciation influenced our mispronunciation of “Scadutree” because, in Old English, the consonant pair “sc” was typically pronounced as “sh” rather than the modern English “sk.” The word “scadu,” from which “Scadutree” is derived, is related to the Old English “sceadu,” meaning “shadow,” and would have been pronounced closer to “shad” rather than “skad.” This historical phonetic rule contrasts with modern English conventions, where “sc” often sounds like “sk,” leading players to mistakenly say “ska-doo-tree” instead of the more accurate “sha-doo-tree.” Additionally, the word “Scadutree” is never vocally pronounced in the game itself, leaving players to infer pronunciation from spelling, which adds to the confusion. This use of archaic spelling and pronunciation is deliberate by FromSoftware to evoke an old, mystical vibe consistent with the game’s lore.
