Monday, November 2, 2009

Hey, dude, where are my vowels?

Do you play Scrabble? I do, and sometimes I cart my Scrabble game over to an English friend's house to play. Like many other players, we sometimes draw impossible combinations in English, and I think I will suggest to her next time that we can also use Serbian words, since that's a pretty good way to use those letters that never seem to go together, at least without an a,e,i, o, or u. In Serbian, r's often serve as vowels along with the standard ones, being trilled on the tip of the tongue, not in your throat like the French ones. I've used my American set here, but since letters are given values for their frequency, the values on a Serbian set wouldn't necessarily be the same as the ones you can see here (some have accents on, but of course not here), lying on Morton-Benson's Dictionary.

Here's what they mean:
  • trg--a square, open place
  • krv--blood
  • trk--race, gallop
  • grb--a crest, like a family one
  • prst--finger
  • smrt--death
  • cvrst--strong
  • srz--marrow
  • cilj--a goal
  • rdja--rust
  • grm--a shrub
  • hleb--bread

If you read Serbian, you can read about Mattel's plans for Serbian Scrabble right here, since right now I've only seen 'Skrebl' in what must be a pirated edition.


MOTHER AND SON PIZZA

When hunger strikes...