Staff at the Glasgow-based Collins Dictionaries have introduced nearly 3,000 new words to the list, including street slang such as “thang,” or thing, “innit,” short for isn’t it, and “blingy,” used to describe flashy jewellery, according to the website of parent company HarperCollins. The addition of the slang term “grrl,” or “grrrl,” also known as a female with attitude, may come as a welcome relief at times when players run out of vowels.I also have mixed feelings about the changes. I understand why this is happening; its an effort to widen the popularity of the game and to make it more "timely" for a younger generation and for a broader ESL audience. The "traditionalist" in me has been playing for over 50 years and would like to agree with a comment made last year when Mattel announced that proper nouns would now be acceptable:
The new list also includes tech terms such as “Myspace,” “webzine,” “Facebook,” “Wiki” and “blook” (a book published via a blog). New non-English words also made it onto the list, including Indian terms for potato and cauliflower, “alu” or “aloo,” and “gobi,” respectively, as well as “wagyu,” the breed of Japanese cattle.
Meanwhile, HarperCollins says several words related to Islam were added, reflecting the increasing role of the religion in world affairs, such as “umma,” an Islamic community, “shahid,” meaning witness or martyr, and “nikah,” or marriage contract.
"Just because people these days are finding Scrabble too hard to play, the rules shouldn't be changed."On the other hand, I've noted previously in this blog that Scrabble rules are not just bent, but flagrantly broken, in our home, where house rules encourage an "open book, double bag, triple return, blank start and recycle" variant of the game.
It will be interesting to see which of these changes make their way into the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary, which is the Bible for tournament and international play.
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