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Previous WoB has shown that the names of many of our favorite Northern Scadrians from the Central Dominance sound French. Without “hearing” the language or seeing it written, we can only assume it, as a whole, is French sounding. source As I’ve been re-reading BoM, I noticed that Allik’s use of language sounded distinct from what we’ve been accustomed to from Northern Scadrial. His words reminded me of a Germanic language. I first noticed this when he used the medallion to speak in the language of our protagonists, because he kept ending sentences with “yah”. This is the same sound that the word “yes” in German makes, and is spelled “ja”. Then came the word “Jaggenmire” that didn’t translate to our protagonists’ language. Marasi tried to pronounce it and came up with the following: She hears the “Ja” sound as a “yay” sound, which is similar to Allik’s frequent use of “yah”. This was further evidence to me that Allik’s language is Germanic in nature. Now it was time to dig deeper, and find other words to help provide evidence for my hypothesis. After further research, I think his language is actually linguistically similar to Northern Germanic— i.e., Scandinavian, specifically Danish. (Note, Denmark is literally just north of Germany.) I started my linguistic sleuthing with Allik’s name and googled German names similar to “Allik”, and came up with the following list (with their meanings): · Alrik: “Noble Leader” · Aldrik: Noble Friend” It appears that the shared root is “Noble”. Maybe this means something about who Allik will be one day? However, these names added an extra consonant, so I kept looking and found the name “Alek” in Danish. Alek is short for Aleksander, which means “Defender of Men”. Is this where Allik gets his name from? Will he be a defender of Southern Scandrian peoples and a noble friend to our protagonists? Allik’s name wasn’t enough for me. What about words that he says in his language? My favorite words he used were the names for Preservation and Ruin: I first googled to see if these names were German words. “Herr” means “Lord” in German…this seemed like a good sign to me! Unfortunately, “Frue” is not a German word. But it is Danish. In Danish, it literally means “wife” or “Ma’am” and “Herr” literally means “Mister”. So we have Mister and Missus…just like how Allik describes them. When Allik first realized Wax was an Allomancer he said a few words aloud in his own language that Marasi overheard: “Fottenstall” doesn’t really translate to much, even if “fotten” means “feet” in Norwegian. However “hanner konge” has a very interesting meaning in Danish: “Male King”. Allik notes that Wax seems very powerful, like the Sovereign, and thinks he needs to always use some type of title for him. The Sovereign described himself as a former King from Northern Scadrial. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me that Allik may be asking Marasi if Wax is a king. I didn’t look at very many other words other than these, because all of this already seemed like good evidence that the Southern Scadrian language is similar to Northern Germanic languages, specifically Danish. If people from Northern Scadrial speak with a French accent/sound, then it seems entirely plausible that the southerners speak some type of Germanic/Scandinavian language, given the clues. What do you all think?

After reading SoS recently my imagination took off to speculating where the future of Elendel and Scadrial is going. Now I think at this point everyone is aware of the Southern Scadrial info drop that Harmony muttered about to wax in the coach ride. How the 'others who were almost destroyed' had much better technology and were more aggressive than those in Elendel. With that information and a logical leap using a juxtaposition of Earth history around the same technological time period as Scadrial I'm proposing that within the next 10 to 50 years Scadrial time North and South will meet and there will be a massive war similar to WW1. So I'm asking you readers to further speculate on this idea. Such as what would cause it, what roles would be devised for Allomancers/Feruchemists in a major war scenario, how would our favorites(the North) be able to win, what part would the Set play in it etc...

If I recall, TLR kept the sDNA of the southern people of Scadrial free from allomantic and feruchemical abilities, like an experimental control. Which makes me wonder how they would have seen any of the Metallic Arts manifest? It seems reasonable that, in order to develop something, especially something mechanical, like a mechanical way to utilize Investure, observation or some knowledge of its existence would be a prerequisite. One possibility could be that somehow, someway, someone intentionally or unintentionally demonstrated allomantic, ferchemical, an/or hemelurgical abilities to them. Well, who do we know that has this knowledge and seems to be involved, usually in subtle ways, with providing knowledge to key people at key points? Granted, that knowledge is not necessarily something that the people even realize is important at the time given, but we the passive viewers of the Cosmere do. It’s known that we’ll eventually get Mistborn: A Cosmerian Odyssey ® with FTL travel. And, many of the theories seem to involve some sort of use of the mechanical access to the Metallic Arts. This FTL and spaceflight seems to be critical to the final phase of the Mistborn story as well as the Cosmere as a whole. Additionally, we know of someone who’s essentially immortal, has lerasium, likely feruchemistry, and can worldhop. I theorize (with no evidence to site whatsoever J) that our ol’ buddy Hoid provided the seed to the southern Scadrial to develop the “more mechanical” way of using the Metallic Arts, whatever that ends up being. I would presume that he did this so that the people of Scadrial would have FTL/spaceflight by the time his final plan, whatever it is, comes together, and well, because he’s Hoid. First theory post, but there’s no need to be gentle; please rip apart if there’s something I way off on here. Haven’t come across any speculation on how the mechanical Metallic Arts developed while spending (way too much) time here at the 17th Shard, so figured I throw this out there. EDIT: Thanks Voidus and Unhinged for corrections & input there. So, it looks like the folks of Southern Scadrial were the same as pre-TLR Scadrials from the North: some Mistings popping up here and here, little to no Mistborn, and likely some more developed level of Feruchemistry since it was more prevalent in the population pre-TLR. This does weaken the "theory" quite a bit , but I'm of the opinion that Hoid's influence in development of Mechanic Metallic Arts is still an interesting suggestion, still has no real evidence to support it, and is still in the realm of the Hoidish

So I've had some thoughts about Hemalurgy and the Southern Scadrians that I figured I should share with y'all. 1. Southern Scadrians will probably have a much better understanding of Hemalurgy than we have seen in the North. We know hemalurgy was a part of Classical Scadrian culture.1 We also know the Lord Ruler kept knowledge about hemalurgy suppressed. He would not be able to do so in the South because they were entirely autonomous. So it would not strain credulity that without them being so restricted they would be leaps and bounds ahead in hemalurgic research. I also believe that it has been put forth that hemalurgic spikes may be used in creating allomantech and ferumechanical devices which would fit with this speculation. 2. The hemalurgy table will use a Southern variation of the Steel/Terris alphabets. The Allomancy Table uses a variation of the steel alphabet used in the late Final Empire era, the Feruchemy Table uses the Terris alphabet used in the late Final Empire era. They are both "descended" from the ancient Terris alphabet used in the HoA chapter headers. I think it would be really cool if the potential hemalurgy table used another set of symbols descended from the ancient Terris ones. It would lend a nice sense of unity between the three. Since there really isn't a place in the north where one would have developed, the natural place to look for it would be in the south. So what do people think? These are just some random thoughts, not really full blown theories but I think they're plausible.