The key answer of exercise 4

1

• Antoine Smith: not convinced the project will work or help protect the language because Scrabble isn’t about knowing the everyday language, it’s about specialised vocabulary and unusual words. One person won a competition in English just by memorising words in a dictionary.
• Karen Lu: likes the idea of wordplay games but believes that Scrabble maybe isn’t the best game to help preserve the language as it’s an oral language with an oral tradition. Antoine agrees.
• Christine: thinks even if the words aren’t useful in themselves, there may be a lot of interesting chat involved in playing the game.

2

Other games mentioned are:

• crosswords
• puns
• Taboo
• tongue twisters
• rhymes
• Words With Friends

3

• Crosswords – probably good but be aware they work differently depending on the alphabet. In Chinese, for example, one character is what in English we might think of as a word, therefore what they have on crosswords are phrases or idioms that share certain words / characters.
• Puns – very important in Chinese, as in the story about the same character existing for dates and peanuts as well as for the phrase ‘May you soon give birth to a boy’.
• Taboo – good as you have to use other words to explain / paraphrase the word you’re trying to elicit.
• Tongue twisters – all that’s mentioned here is that they’re fun, can have a competitive element, but not really things you’ll ever say in conversation.
• Rhymes and alliteration – useful because a lot of common expressions feature it – ‘here and there’, ‘everything’s ship-shape’, etc.
• Words With Friends – lots of chat around the game, some users have even had relationships as a result of using the app!