The Gerudo are a civilized group of women that originate from the Gerudo Desert. In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Link can access the town without dressing up like a woman, like in Breath of the Wild. As you complete side quests in the Gerudo area and interact with these people, you will notice they say some odd things. These words are in the Gerudo language. Not much is said like this, but you can understand what is. Here are all Gerudo words and what they mean in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
As noted above, there are a limited amount of times that you can see a Gerudo say something in the Gerudo language. These are often greetings in Tears of the Kingdom, but there are also a few descriptive words. Here are all of the Gerudo language words in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom we know about so far.
- Sa’oten – An exclamation similar to “Wow!”
- Sarqso – Thank you
- Sav’otta – Good morning
- Sav’aaq – Good day
- Sav’orq – Goodbye
- Sav’orr – Good night
- Sav’saaba – Good evening
- Vasaaq – Welcome
- Vaba – Grandmother
- Vai – Woman
- Vehvi – Daughter
- Voe – Man
- Vure – Bird
As you can see above, anytime a Gerudo starts a phrase with “Sav,” they are saying “good” as in a greeting. As for Sa’oten, we don’t have a direct translation, but we know it was used as an exclamation. An NPC named Rotana says, “Sa’oten! I believe I’ve made a breakthrough!” Whether that directly means “wow” or “yes,” we do not know right now, but the cadence behind it shows excitement.
As you can see, while the Gerudo have a different language in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it isn’t as expansive as an actual language. Nintendo uses it as a way to further show how different their culture is from all others in Hyrule. Comparing them to the Goron, Rito, and Zora, they are the only ones with strict laws against interacting with males. Of course, a lot of this largely comes from the fact that they are almost entirely made up of women, or vai, as their language refers to them. Only one male is born in their society every century, who is Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom and Ocarina of Time. We will be interested to see how much more the Gerudo language continues to expand in the future.
