You’ve been pronouncing one of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s most important items wrong this whole time. It turns out that ‘Scadutree’ isn’t said like it’s spelt, and we’ve all looked like massive fools any time we’ve uttered it out loud.
Shadow of the Erdtree includes consumables called Scadutree Fragments, which buff your Tarnished (now with extra buffs thanks to a new patch), but while the fragments are a vital part of the Elden Ring DLC, it appears we’ve all been duped when it comes to how to say it.
Like the majority of the internet, I’ve been saying Shadow of the Erdtree‘s Scadutree like “skadoo-tree” this whole time. Apparently, that’s completely wrong – and history and ancient language buffs online have been quick to correct our collective faux pas.
As spotted by GamesRadar, streamer DrDeComposing (the streamer who beat Elden Ring using a saxophone) took to X (formerly Twitter) to note that Scadutree is actually pronounced entirely differently. “The “sc” consonant pair is actually pronounced with a “sh” sound in Old English,” he said. “That means that the Scadutree is actually pronounced closer to “Shadutree” – Shadow Tree.” While not an exact match, the Old English word for shadow is actually sceadu, before it morphed into ‘schadowe’ and then ‘shadow’ as the language continued to evolve. Given the name of the new DLC is literally Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the maths is all mathing.
This isn’t the first time FromSoftware has leaned into old languages for Elden Ring’s lore – there’s the Blackgaol Knight in Shadow of the Erdtree (the archaic spelling of ‘jail’, even if my brain wants to read it every time as ‘gae-ol’), and the Lands Between’s Siofra River – which, by the way, is pronounced like “Sheef-rah”, given it uses Gaelic spelling. There’s also the Haligtree (Old English word for ‘holy’) just to really drive it home.
I’ll now be proceeding with caution in all conversations about Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree in fear of flubbing the pronunciation of yet another term and embarrassing myself in front of all my mates who are really into Old English (surprisingly, that’s actually quite a few of them). I’ll be continuing to say it in my head like “skadoo,” though. It feels crunchy to say it that way, and no I cannot elaborate what I mean by that.
Are you as equally mind-blown by this Elden Ring revelation as I am, or did I just massively miss the memo?
Image: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco
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