We regret to inform you that you've most likely been incorrectly pronouncing the name of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdrtree's controversial Scadutree scaling mechanic. The Scadutree Fragments scattered throughout The Shadow Lands are essential in powering up your character. In addition to not fully understanding how the system works, players, it seems, have been missing the forest for the trees.
Spotted by Eurogamer, this linguistic lesson was most prominently "actually-ed" by noted loremaster VaatiVidya, whose YouTube videos have been explaining FromSoftware plots to less-observant fans for years now.
With a voice that could soothe a Fire Giant, Vaati explains that the word "scadu", which has its roots in Old English, means shade or shadow and is pronounced "sha-doo", with the full word being "sha-doo-tree", as opposed to "ska-doo-tree". It also makes logical and thematic sense; it's a fragment of the shadow tree, and it's pronounced almost the same way. Isn't etymology fun?