Scrabble Adds Over 3,000 New “Words”
The infamous favorite word game Scrabble is yet again transitioning and changing with the times and modern language. It has announced its addition of over 3,000 new "words" to the official Scrabble dictionary. You might think this is awesome and exciting, but put that eagerness on hold, because the new additions are nothing but a disgrace to the wonderful and complex English language.
Scrabblehas been in existence since about the 1940s, when architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the earliest version of the wooden board game. He put a lot of his time into the game, tweaking it coincide with the current language and times, and then in 1948, handed over the rights of the game to James Brunot. After a few more years and name changes (including Lexiko and Criss-Crosswords), the game came to be known as Scrabble.
Brace yourself, because the new additions (mostly slang words) are just atrocious and a huge insult to English language, spelling and grammar. It's even worse for people like me, who have always loved the language, have studied it in college and plan to devote their lives to it. Journalism and English majors, contain yourselves:
Here are a few of the new "words" that will be added to the dictionary:
- Thang- as in, wow, look at that babe shakin' her thang!- please note my hatred and sarcasm here
- Grrrl- as in a person who can't spell and pronounce the word "girl," and might often make wild animal noises- grrrr!
- Innit- this is perhaps the worst one- it's the slang and abbreviation term for "isn't it." I know, I feel the same way; it's just absolutely abhorrent
- Blingy- when did bling become a "word?"
- MySpace and Facebook- apparently pop culture proper names belong in a dictionary along with education, intelligence and intellect.
- Qin and Fiqh- Scrabble now contains "Q" words that don't require a "U" as well. The game also doesn't require you to have a brain anymore either, does it?
According to the Yahoo! article:
The game's publishers say the additions make this the "most comprehensive Scrabble wordlist ever produced," but that's doing little to soothe some players' ruffled feathers.
I don't like slang words at all, but if they are going to put them in we will have to use them, Jean Gallacher, of Scotland's Inverness Scrabble Club, told The Scotsman. I think there is too much slang in the English language as it is, with the way young people are talking.
Scrabble officials say the goal is to make the game more "hip." What they're actually doing is telling kids it's OK to use
these words, and that they are acceptable in the English language. These kids will just become more dumb, and this word usage will only continue to get worse. This makes me infuriated, and you might think I'm overreacting. It's just a game, or is it? It might just be a game, but with this fun, past time activity will come more slang and more kids who sound uneducated. Next they will be accepting this sort of language in schools, and eventually in essays, books, songs, etc.
This is a horrible start to a devastating future of language. I hope that this is eventually put to an end, and that English is once again the amazing language it is. Until then, we adults will painstakingly have to listen to and watch kids make "words" like thang and omg lol grrrl every time we sit down for a "leisurely" game of Scrabble.
Now my blog looks all pretty with tons of red underlining with the "words" it doesn't recognize. : D
What do you think of this news? Do you agree or disagree with my statement?