Yiddish, Hebrew and South African words spice up Scrabble

STEVEN GRUZD

Recently, I was playing Scrabble against my friend, Howard. Holding the letters ROAMHEN* on my rack, after some thought, I laid down MENORAH for about 100 points.

“MENORAH? What’s a MENORAH?” he said.

“A MENORAH,” I replied, smiling, “is a seven-branched Jewish candelabra.”

In fact, you might PLOTZ at how many Hebrew, Yiddish and South African words make the lexicon so LEKKER.

The official dictionary used for Scrabble is the 2015 Collins English Dictionary, with 276 643 allowable words from two to nine letters. Scrabble is also played in 62 other languages, including in Afrikaans, Hebrew and Setswana. Some have different alphabets, like Hebrew, and others have different letter distributions and point values to reflect their frequency in these languages.

Yiddish and Hebrew words are especially interesting to Scrabble players, says Durban-born Israeli linguist and Scrabble champ Evan Cohen. It’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint exactly which words from these two languages have been borrowed from where, he adds.

The interest to Scrabble players arises not only because Yiddish and Hebrew words often contain high-scoring Ks, Qs and Zs, but also because of their many variant spellings and hooks. Hooks are single letters that can be added to the start or end of a word, permitting another word to be played perpendicularly, such as extending FLAMING to FLAMINGO, or ARTICLE to PARTICLE. Several (but by no means all) allowable Hebrew and Yiddish words take a plural in -IM*, -IN or -OT(H)* as well as the Anglicised -S*.

All the Hebrew letters are playable words, from ALEPH to TAV, including the useful VAV and the U-less (but far from useless) QOPH. Most allowable U-less Q-words come from Arabic, but there is a smattering from Inuit, spoken by Eskimos (including the fabulous UMIAQ and QAJAQ, describing types of boats), as well as the Hebrew SHEQEL(S), SHEQALIM and TZADDIQ(S), TZADDIQIM, and QABALA(H)(S).

On Pesach, you could play MATZA(H) or MATZO(H). Be sure not to spill any (C)HAROSET or MAROR on your MA(C)HZOR, or (H)AGGADA(H), and certainly don’t have the (C)HUTZPAH to eat CHAMETZ or CHOMETZ, and definitely no TRAYF/TREYF/TREF(A)/(H) or TREIF(A), unless you want the BETH DIN to KVETCH, KI(B)BITZ or make you S(C)HVITZ.

At other times of the year, use the SHOFAR/SHOPHAR, SUCCAH/SUKKAH, DREID(E)L and (C)HANUKIA(H), but both LULAV* and ETROG* are no good.

You can wear a KIPPA(H) or YA(R)MULKA/YARMULKE and (T)ZITZIT and TALLITH, dance the HORA(H) with the TORA(H), or cleanse your soul in the MIKVA(H) or MIKVEH.

The allowable Yiddish words tend to follow North American pronunciation, reflected in their spelling. So, you can play your BUBBE or BUBBIE and ZAIDY, but not your BOBBA* and ZAYDA*, although you can play ZAIDA, ZAIDEH or ZEDA.

Many of the delicious and slightly rude Yiddish words for silly or contemptuous people are playable, from KLUTZ and YUTZ to NUDNI(C)K, S(C)HLEMIE/HL, S(C)HLUB, S(C)HMUCK, and S(C)HMOCK.

Not be outdone, scores of South African words – mostly from Afrikaans – can be played, from exclamations like EINA, EISH and SJOE, to delicious South Africanisms such as ISIT, HOWZIT and BOYKIE. You can BRAAI, DOP or DONDER until you’re GATVOL, eat KABELJOU(W), SOSATIE or BILTONG (for Scrabble, they’re all KOSHER), and smoke a SKYF, ZOL or TIK. You can literally play JUKSKEI.

Other South African languages have given us DUMELA, HAMBA, INDUNA, INDABA, NKOSI, MBAQANGA and UBUNTU, and the 2010 FIFA* World Cup blasted VUVUZELA into the language.

Finally, you never quite know when these words will crop up. I was playing Facebook Scrabble with my friend Dylan Early, who recently emigrated from Johannesburg to Wellington, New Zealand. He looked to have DRE(C)K; I had the game sewn up. Dylan said: “I didn’t see it at first. Holding KEGPOO and a blank. I was watching TV at the time and then it popped into my head. I jumped up and ran around the house, celebrating wildly. A once-in-a-lifetime play.” He played OPGEFOK across the bottom triple-word score, snatching the win with a very rude word. I had to say “MAZELTOV” – but BLIKSEM!

• All words in this article spelled in capitals are allowable in Scrabble. Those marked with * are not. Brackets indicate that the word can be spelled with or without the bracketed letter(s).
• Steven Gruzd is a five-time South African National Scrabble Champion, chairman of the Gauteng Association of Scrabble Players and vice-chair of Scrabble SA.