Scrabble
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a lexophile. I love words. The longer, the better. So it is therefore surprising that I am not a fan of the game Scrabble.
I simply never had the opportunity to play until a year or two ago. I did fairly well, except that another player ran out of tiles before I had an opportunity to do so, so I lost points, and lost the game. Also, the random tile-drawing element introduces luck into the game, and I am not fond of games that rely on chance. I prefer games that rely solely on skill or strategy. For this reason, I think I'd prefer Boggle, where all players are working with the same set of letters, over Scrabble, where one player can have xylophone on a triple word score space while the other player is stuck with dgzvbqe as his tiles.
But a friend recently asked to play with me, which is unfortunate, because neither of us own a set. I tried looking online, but even Scrabulous is having issues because they're being shut down for copyright infringement. But it DID lead me to this list of two-letter words that are legal for use in Scrabble.
As I'm reading through this list, I find myself amazed at some of the inclusions. I'm a stickler for accuracy, so I'm bothered by several words.
I don't know why this bothers me. Maybe if I'd played more, I'd understand better. Or maybe if I got into the tournament level games where people are amazingly ruthless, I'd see the appeal of this sort of word list. But as it is, it's like nails on a chalkboard to me.
I simply never had the opportunity to play until a year or two ago. I did fairly well, except that another player ran out of tiles before I had an opportunity to do so, so I lost points, and lost the game. Also, the random tile-drawing element introduces luck into the game, and I am not fond of games that rely on chance. I prefer games that rely solely on skill or strategy. For this reason, I think I'd prefer Boggle, where all players are working with the same set of letters, over Scrabble, where one player can have xylophone on a triple word score space while the other player is stuck with dgzvbqe as his tiles.
But a friend recently asked to play with me, which is unfortunate, because neither of us own a set. I tried looking online, but even Scrabulous is having issues because they're being shut down for copyright infringement. But it DID lead me to this list of two-letter words that are legal for use in Scrabble.
As I'm reading through this list, I find myself amazed at some of the inclusions. I'm a stickler for accuracy, so I'm bothered by several words.
- AA: "rough, cindery lava." First off, this is a Hawai'ian word (no, I did NOT misspell that). I once read a list of over-used motifs in fantasy novels that asked, "Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?" What this fails to realise is that there are languages on Earth that use apostrophes as actual phenomes. Hawai'ian is just one such example; this language makes use of the "glottal stop" as part of the sound system. The glottal stop is when you close off your throat to stop making noise without closing your mouth. The proper pronunciation of the name of the island state is "huh-VIE-(glottal stop)ee." The glottal stop is written as an apostrophe. The word "aa" that is mentioned in the two-word list is actually spelled "a'a." I don't think it's right to leave out the apostrophe and use it as a word in Scrabble. (As a side note, I wonder what the writers of the aforementioned list think of the ! phenome that is used in the language !Kung spoken in Namibia and Angola, and sounds like a click to English speakers)
- BI: "Bisexual." This is more of a slang term. I dislike the use of slang in a game that purports to be based on "official" English. If we start allowing slang, doesn't that mean that soon we'll have words like "fo'snizzle" and "dawg?"
- EF: "The letter F." I didn't know that letters could be spelled. Even if they were, I would have thought F would be spelled "EFF." And why are we using these as words in Scrabble in the first place?
- HM: "Interjection expressing thought." This isn't really a word; it's a non-commital sound. If we're using non-word sounds, can I also use THPPT: "The sound made by sticking out one's tongue and blowing a raspberry around it, as a taunt" or TSK?
- ET: "Eat-conjugated." "Et?" Since when is that the proper conjugation of "eat?" That's hill-people talk, and I do NOT accept hill-people talk as valid English.
- LI: "Chinese unit of distance." You know, I realise that English steals from other languages quite regularly, but if it's not something that is actually used by English speakers, then I don't think it should count. When's the last time you told someone "The place you're looking for is seven li down the road?"
- MU: "Greek Letter." Now we're not just using foreign words, we're also using foreign alphabets? Can I then also use "ce," the Spanish name for the letter C? What about "Hache," which is the Spanish name for H? Or even better, "Kenaz," the name for the Futhark Viking Rune that represents K and looks like WO: "Woe." Since when are we allowed to drop silent letters and find an accepted spelling? Can I start using "stal" as an alternate spelling of "stale?" Or maybe "thru" will actually be accepted as a valid spelling of "through" now?
I don't know why this bothers me. Maybe if I'd played more, I'd understand better. Or maybe if I got into the tournament level games where people are amazingly ruthless, I'd see the appeal of this sort of word list. But as it is, it's like nails on a chalkboard to me.