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>Anyway given the way Polish looks, she's in no position to complain<
Interesting coincidence: It was an expatriate POLISH colleague who helped me polish my ENGLISH during my stay in London.


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< Polish Scrabble>

which leads to an interesting question -- has Scrabble been adapted for other languages and, if so, how has the number of letters (and their numerical value) changed?


#4715 08/31/00 09:16 AM
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Google results 1-10 of about 13,800 for Polish Scrabble. Search took 0.34 seconds.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of humanity" - Albert Einstein

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>> given the way Polish looks, she's in no position to complain

On the contrary. I think Polish is an easy language to learn. It may be hard to pronounce for non-native speakers but it's very easy to read and write. There aren't as many spelling and reading rules there, (almost none). It really is written the way it sounds.

It also has an almost non-existent sentence structure. Unlike in English where you have to follow a guideline of Subject Verb Object, in Polish you can mix it all you like because of Object suffixes and subject-to-verb agreement. SVO, SOV, VOS, VSO, OSV, OVS.


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>>once you'd raided a hundred other sets for the extra zeds

There is a reason for those extra Zs. They're not really all Zs. There's a regular Z, and there's a Z with a line accent above which has a long equivalent of "zi" and that's how you pronounce it. Then there's a Z with a dot accent above, which is pronounced like the French J. There are more accented letters in the Polish alphabet, and if you take away the accent you can also alter the meaning of the word. So in a scrabble game you wouldn't be able to use one Z in place of another.

And there aren't a hundred of them. There are only 3.



#4718 08/31/00 02:45 PM
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Here's a short history on Polish scrabble I found on http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/7724/english.htm

Some people in Poland had already started playing a polish version of SCRABBLE in the 1970's using boards and letters they made themselves.
The first tournament was organized in 1987 by Jacek Ciesielski who popularized the game in a weekly publication called "Razem". He had also Polonized the rules of the game and determined the distribution of the letters.
Finally, in 1993, Polish SCRABBLE had officially started. The first polish championship took place that year with the winner being a businessman from Warsaw named Tomasz Zwolinski. Zwolinski repeated his success the following year and again in 1996 and in 1997.
In 1995 Pawel Stefaniak, a student from Biala Podlaska, became the national champion.
Zwolinski also won the second Cup of Poland in 1996. Ryszard Debski, teacher from Biala Podlaska won the first one in 1995 and Pawel Dawidson, a student from Czestochowa, won the third one in May 1997.
We have been holding local tournaments since the beginning of this year.
We play polish SCRABBLE using the same board and basic rules as the original english version, but we use a different set of letters, of course.




#4719 08/31/00 05:07 PM
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>once you'd raided a hundred other sets for the extra zeds!

many years ago Some of us were playing Scrabble and someone mentioned, "Gosh, if I just had another 'a' I could add to 'tore' over there and have cacciatore and a triple word score." I said, "Nope, there are only two c's in the set." She replied, "But I have three right here."

Sure enough, we were playing with two sets mixed together.



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And there aren't a hundred of them. There are only 3.

I meant no disrespect to the Polish language. My comment was simply an attempt at humourous hyperbole, recognizing the fact the frequency of use for the letter zed is much greater in Polish than in English, and so playing Scrabble in Polish would be impossible with a standard English set. If however one combined several English sets, then one could score quite incredible points with Polish words, due to zed's being worth ten points. It was supposed to be funny! For any offence taken at my good-natured jibe, I apologise.

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My comment was simply an attempt at humourous hyperbole, recognizing the fact the frequency of use for the letter zed is much greater in Polish than in English

Yes, it is true that the Polish language has more uses for the letter Z than English. I was not offended though, merely jumping to the chance of being able to share my knowledge of Polish with others.


#4722 09/07/00 05:15 AM
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Even in German or French, the distribution and values of letters are completely different from the English set. In German, the newer version of the game has a different distribution from an older one, making it "easier", but reducing the potential for really high scores.


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