Words that start with X or how you play Scrabble in African? 8 interesting facts about other Scrabble language versions

Polish Scrabble (also, correctly referred to as SKRABLE) differs from the English version primarily by the presence of diacritical marks, ( i.e. ą, ę, ó, ć, ł, ń, ś, ż, ź). The size of the board remains the same, and so are the scored vowels and Polish such as r, n s, b, or g. However, some of the national versions are so different from the original that we might not even notice that is Scrabble and not some regional wordplay. What words that start with X or words that start with K can be arranged in Scrabble? We present to you 10 facts about foreign language Scrabble versions!

1. Basque is only played with 21 letters

Letters are missing in the baskilian version, such as C, Q, V, W i Y, but you can find there, apart from 21 single letters, also unique double characters RR, TS, TX, TZ. Unusual in this language is also the distribution of letters- tiles with the letter I is nine ( what is still a norm) , the ones with E are twelve, and the with A are fourteen.

2. In Lithuania it is also used Ą I Ę

In Lithuanian version the game is played with 104 tiles. On one of them the letter ą is placed, on the other ę. The first one is worth one point, the second two. Besides, in the dictionaries of both languages there are a few identical – sounding words that are not just borrowings from the English language. Scrabble game with Lithuanians? We were not without a chance!

3. You want to feel as real hipsters? Play in Latin!

Not only hipsters must be interested in Latin Scrabble , of course. Even though the language is dead, it is still used in medicine and biology, and its knowledge can be useful. You can learn Latin by playing Scrabble also. It is worth knowing that in that language version there are no letters such as K, Y and Z. On the other hand, I performs both functions of itself and of J, a V – V i U.

4. AAA, the best Scrabble definition and words that start with X in Malaysian

The Malaysian version does not seem to differ from the others. Entertainment begins on the board of the same size, soap ( empty tiles) where you will find the highest – scored F I Z , and the least- scored are most of the vowels and a few most popular consonants. In the game, the letters Q, V, X are missing, the same as in Polish language. There is one detail , though, that this version differs from the others- there are 19 tiles with the letter A. Until you would like to say – that’s so much!

5. You will not find Scharfes-S in German version

Even though, majority of us associates German with umlauts I B, this letter you will not find in game used on the west side of Odra. It’s because, not so long ago it did not exist in Unicode( computer base of characters), it’s not used , also, in German – language Switzerland and Liechtenstine. Currently, you will find 102 tiles in the game, where before the year of 1990 there were 119.

6. MegaScrabble in Armenian

In the competition of the most original regional version wins unbeatable Armenia. In the non-official edition we will find 146 tiles! Among them you can hit 3 soaps and 38 various letters. If that is not enough, the playing field is also bigger- instead the standard 15×15 it is 17×17 fields. That means, that in sum instead of 225 there are 289! I wonder if Alfred Mosher Butts, the creator of Scrabble foresaw that his game might evolve in this direction. If so, hats off, even I was surprised when I read about it in 2020.

7. In Hungary DZS is not used as well as there is no words that start with X in hungarian dictionary

Although we often associate Hungarians with difficult to pronounce consonants in the language without first learning it, we will not find them in the Magyar version too many. It’s only 5 tiles. Two of them are with double character GY and one character NY, CS, LY, ZS. Besides them, DZ, DZS are used in Hungarian language. Creators of the game recognized that the characters are not used enough in common language to use them in a game. A pity because then the Hungarian version would be the only one with three-characters one.

8. There is no letter C in African version. But what about words that start with X?

Even though the letter C is one of the most used letters in European languages, you will not find it in African version. The letters Q, X i Z are not there either, but there is a letter V. The highest- scored letter in the game is J, which is worth 10 points. Letters X I Z can be replaced with soap ( which similarly to the Polish and English version are found on two tiles) , but the letters C I Q cannot be replaced.

As you can see, playing Scrabble it’s not just entertaining but it can also be an interesting study of individual languages. The examples that I introduced are just few interesting facts. A game translated into almost every language the world always looks a bit different. Often, even within one language there are several versions that differ significantly from one another. And sometimes they are even made for specific dialects. Do you know that even edition of Esperanto exists? Although it’s an artificial language it has its own Scrabble version. Who knows, maybe in a near future the slang edition will be created , taking into account , for example , the rules of the language, which the internet users use? Sure, that sounds strange, but it would never measure up to the Armenian version!