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Another fun fact I learnt during research for my previous novel: the Polish have more ways to say ‘fuck’ than any other language.
Apparently variations of ‘fuck’ exploded there during and shortly after WWII.
Also, in Denmark, ‘fuck’ was adopted as a mild expletive after roughly 1960, when western movies containing the word were imported. It was especially interesting because there never were any strong expletives there (most ‘curses’ were actual curses, like ‘let the devil take you!’), so the word didn’t have the same impact as in other cultures. This resulted in young children just casually saying ‘fuck’ in public, to the bemusement and sometimes consternation of English-speaking tourists.
Language is funny.
I live in Denmark and find curses surprisingly casual, even fuck. I fucking like it.
I’m American and I also enjoy casually cursing. May my government all get cancer.
Yeah, stick any verb prefix onto the polish words for fuck and you’ve probably got a word that people use
I came across a page that tried to document them by region and regularity. It was quite long.
Soft, deep snow, he wasn’t cheating.
He’s proven to be a dipshit and possibly way worse than that, but Stephen Pinker pointed out in the Language Instinct that if you think there aren’t just as many words in English for snow, you’ve never talked to a skier or snowboarder.
Probably more to do with English having every word seperated while many other languages combining them into one word. Like if you would combine “snow on the ground” in one word as “groundsnow”. That makes it a lot easier to get to 50.
This is it. English writes components of a noun compound with spaces in between until it has been around for a very long time. Other languages (German, famously) don’t. But it’s the exact same word-forming process.
There’s no difference between the English “mobile phone” and German “Mobiltelefon” except spelling (and of course, nobody uses either any more). So, if you are an English speaker and you marvel at a language’s (like German’s) ability to just jam words together to make new ones - rejoice! English has that ability too!
I mean, that word is eight letters, and you only have seven tiles in your hand.
We don’t have the entire context. The game could have been ridiculous. Like, the lady could have started with “A”, then the guy made it “AN”, and then the third guy made the eight letter word. But I think the author intended to imply that he went first and plonked down that entire word.
Interestingly, no one has any tiles after that one word.
That’s how he used 8 tiles! He stole all of their tiles and is hiding them in his parka. He must be a hugely talented thief to take their tiles without them noticing.
Then challenge?
This. You don’t play Scrabble without an agreed upon dictionary for challenges. Comic premise rejected!
I usually play that the one who argues the loudest wins the challange
Do the Inuit people have a dictionary?
Would you agree to playing a Scrabble game with dictionaries in multiple languages, not all of which you actually speak?
It’s not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow, he is cheating
They might not have 50 words, but he isn’t cheating.
I doubt that’s in any Scrabble dictionary, though.
I am not saying you are right or wrong but I am really excited to see if someone posts a link to a scrabble dictionary that has that word in it.
I think it would be an exhaustive search to prove either way and I am way too exhausted to even try… but I am so hoping a person comes along that reads your comment and innately knows the exact scrabble dictionary that has that exact word in it and posts the link with proof.
I love it when an incredible amount of coincidences come together and we all learn something.
Low probability but I am here for it.
So words?
No, I don’t need glasses. My eyes are just tired.
