Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is replete with Scadus – we’ve got the Scadu Atlus, the Scadutree itself, and of course all those Scadutree Fragments. If you’re like me, you’ve probably been pronouncing this strange, new word like “skadoo” since you first came across it. But it turns out we’ve been wrong this whole time.
Streamer DrDeComposing – you might remember him as the one who beat Elden Ring with a saxophone – has noted on Twitter that “the ‘sc’ consonant pair is actually pronounced with a ‘sh’ sound in Old English. That means that the Scadutree is actually pronounced closer to ‘Shadutree’ – Shadow Tree,” DrDeComposing explains. “FROMSOFT YOU LINGUISTIC NERDS I LOVE YOU”
FromSoftware is no stranger to using archaic spellings with Elden Ring lore. If you’ve fought the Blackgaol Knight in Shadow of the Erdtree you’ve already confronted at least one example with an outdated spelling of jail, but gaol is still technically early Modern English – not proper Old English. But we can see an example of the older language in the Haligtree, which borrows the Old English word for ‘holy.’
‘Scadu’ is not technically an actual Old English word, but FromSoftware has almost certainly derived it from ‘sceadu,’ which became ‘schadowe’ in Middle English and then, of course, ‘shadow’ in Modern English. I fear my brain might always see ‘scadu’ as ‘skadoo’ – and I’m always going to call those fragments ‘skadooby snacks’ – but at least we now all know the truth.
Does all this Scadu talk have you hankering to beat the Scadutree Avatar boss in Shadow of the Erdtree?Â
