Another new Polish name for you spelling bee champions.
I wonder – do they have Wheel of Fortune in Poland? It must be expensive to buy a vowel if it’s based on supply and demand. Instead of naming a specific vowel, you would just say “I’ll buy a vowel” and Ryn Scryski would give you all of them – in the unlikely event that there are any.
It’s too bad the Poles didn’t colonize Hawaii, where they have nothing but vowels. Between the two, they might have been able to create one sensible language.
Students of the Faculty of Acting learn that their diploma film will be made by the famous director Gajda. This news electrifies them – everyone wants to be in the cast. Gajda appears occasionally. He leaves a camera with the students – in his absence, they are to record improvised scenes around the topic of jealousy and rivalry based on the story of Cain and Abel and Balladyna and Alina. Rehearsals begin, we get to know the students’ personalities, their dreams and ambitions. Disproportions in acting talents, differences in opinion and wealth, envy, pasts, and complicated emotional relationships are also revealed. We focus on the relationship of four characters: Lukasz/Abel, Olo/Cain, Julka/Balladyna and Alicja/Alina. Professional rivalry overlaps with private rivalry. The line between reality and fiction is slowly starting to blur. The four of them play a game for a role in the film, which turns into a game for everything. At the party, there is a fight between Lukasz and Olo. The fight gets out of control.
Magdalena won an acting award for her performance in this film.
Now, now… there are a few consonants in the Hawaiian language.
Although Hawaii does have the only city that consists of all vowels: Aiea.
Because they have so few consonants, only 13 letters altogether (12 plus a glottal stop), and long words are commonplace, it was impossible for my girlfriend to figure out oral directions in Honolulu. “I’m sorry, this is the Hotel Kaiulani. You are looking for the Hotel Halekulani.”
I love the name of the state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua’a
Other great Hawaiian words: sweet potato is aaaa, ear is eeiao, the verb to crow is oooo, the adjective different is eiiae.
My favorite Hawaiian word does have one consonant – and three glottal stops! It is spelled ‘a’ali’i
(That’s not a common word. It’s a type of native plant.)
Actually, there are consonants except that they are all tied to vowels. Like in Japanese. So that’s why you see a lot of vowels. But at least it’s easier to deal with sequential vowels than sequential consonants.
And I think the averge is more like 5 syllables, at least with the most common areas. Kalanianaole is seven, and that’s one of the significant highways. Ka’a’awa, which for some reason is intimidating to say, is still only 4. But I think a word that’s around Kamehameha size is kinda the average. Not that I actually speak Hawaiian or anything.
A story that is often told is that the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a was voted to be the state fish was so that the white people would have trouble with it. Don’t know if that’s really true or not. The other story I heard was that it won because it was easier to say than the other fish that was considered.
Hawaii has so many state stuff that I wonder if our government is so bored that they have the time to come up with crap like the state microbe. It is a one-party state, however, with little to no Republican representation in the state house and senate, so the Democrats do whatever they want. It is quite funny that the Republicans represent the best chance for change than the Democrats do, when it’s usually (traditionally) the other way around.
I find humuhumunukunukuapua’a easy to say, except for the final a’a. The glottal stops are tough for non-islanders, but you can memorize it quickly because it’s just repetition, and all the vowels are u except for that part at the end. The difficult thing with Hawaiian is not in individual words, but in the fact that they all sound alike to us. My poor girlfriend kept insisting that she was in the right place to meet me, when she had swapped an h for a k, or something similar.
That said, ‘a’ali’i is daunting!
If I recall, the other fish in the running was the dreaded lauwiliwilinukunuku’oi’oi
I’ll bet Z’s are worth a whole lot less in Polish Scrabble. And all the letters are worth one point in Hawaiian Scrabble.
Polish scrabble doesn’t even bother assigning a value to K. They treat it as a blank and everybody gets to add one whenever needed.
Which is frequently.
Kidding aside, there is Polish Scrabble. “K” is worth 2 points, “J” is worth 3, and “Z” is worth only one! There are no Xs or Qs.
According to Wikipedia:
Polish-language editions of Scrabble use these 100 tiles:[36]
2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
1 point: A ×9, I ×8, E ×7, O ×6, N ×5, Z ×5, R ×4, S ×4, W ×4
2 points: Y ×4, C ×3, D ×3, K ×3, L ×3, M ×3, P ×3, T ×3
3 points: B ×2, G ×2, H ×2, J ×2, Ł ×2, U ×2
5 points: Ą ×1, Ę ×1, F ×1, Ó ×1, Ś ×1, Ż ×1
6 points: Ć ×1
7 points: Ń ×1
9 points: Ź ×1
An interesting thing that.I learned about Scrabble is that there a significant number of players of English language Scrabble internationally who do not actually know how to speak or to read very well in English. They often do not know the meaning of the words that they are putting down, but have memorized them as ‘letter patterns’ permissible under the rules.
A guy from NZ just won the Spanish Scabble chamionship not able to speak spanish just
memorized all the words.
He should get an award for that alone.
I was just going to note that. It’s amazing to memorize every word in a dictionary when you don’t know what any of them mean! I guess that level of memorization ability means that, given enough prep time, he could win in any language.
I wonder if he can do them simultaneously – play an expert in English on one board, then move to the next board and play somebody in Spanish, then back to the English board, similar to what experts sometimes do in chess.
if you ever want an interesting read about the bizarre world of hardcore competitive Scrabble, check out “Word Freak” by Stefan Fatsis. The author eventually becomes part of the story as he succumbs to the lure of the competitive game himself.
Wales has entered the chat.
Don’t know if this will post, but it’s pictures of sounds for all of those Zs