Don't let anybody give you shit for having an accent. Accents are wonderful, especially from a linguistic perspective as a window into the phonology and speaking habits of a speaker's native language. I personally love the way native German speakers sound when speaking English.
Regarding viewing phonies as the correct move, that seems to be mostly a thing in North American scrabble, where the Double Challenge format is used - that means if you challenge a word that turns out to be correct you lose your turn. That means challenging is a lot more risky, and you can be in a situation where you would not want to challenge unless you are sure that the word in question indeed is phony, because losing your turn to a failed challenge means losing the game. Also, if the opponent has an S, playing such a phony can be seen as a trapping attempt - they might try to hook their S to it, and then you can challenge your own phony, essentially to get an extra turn.
It’s really cool to learn about how differences in the structures of words in German vs English change the strategies in interesting ways! It makes me really interested watching more non-English games ❤
Excellent. I'm actually interested in learning to speak German and was thinking of trying to learn German Scrabble for the vocabulary help so your lists are a big help to me Your accent is awesome BTW. I'm jealous of it :)
Very interesting and well made video, as an English scrabble player - especially the meanings of the words, what synergies are different in german and so on
i know this is really, really dumb, but this is alao really funny so i noticed that like 12 years ago you made a domino cube FWR, and opened the comment section of that video then i found a random verified youtuber "Kaplamino" who commented and clicked on their channel i then found that they were a youtuber that recently made a comeback 3 weeks ago i then went into the comment section of Kaplamino's most recent video, found another verified youtuber, realized it was one i had found many many years ago that i used to love, and subscribed for nostalgia. thanks for letting all of this come full circle by going from domino creator to scrabble historian
I don't remember ever knowing the verb "pausen" even though my mum's job title was Tracer! (Pauserin?) I'm a fan of words like Pause that coincidentally have other meanings. Another one I learned recently is Esse (eat v/forge n).
It’s especially crazy if those words are opposites, like “umfahren”, which can mean “to drive around sth.” or “to run sth. over”. Only context and emphasis make it possible to figure out the intended meaning.
i don't play scrabble nor do i speak german, but I'm here because you deserve support and the little amount of your content i understand is very interesting man
Sorry to hear that fellow Germans make fun of your accent. I know it happens frequently, but we should be more forgiving towards each other. Having a slight accent is perfectly fine and as long as you enunciate properly (eg. correct intonation and no mumbling) nobody should have trouble understanding you. Your accent is actually very nice to listen to in my opinion. A small question at the end: You said in on of your other videos that German Scrabble is based on the Duden. Does this mean there's no "scrabble dictionary" that comes with the game if you buy a German set? I've only ever played Scrabble once in my life with my French host family and the "dico" as they called it really made an impression on me lol. Unlike Nigel I had one year of French study under my belt but I hardly managed to find any words at all. If German scrabble really used the Duden: What happens with words that were valid in previous iterations of the dictionary and aren't anymore?
No dictionary comes with the game because the game rules actually don't prescribe a dictionary, they just say that you should agree on one beforehand. The Duden is used for tournaments and our association has compiled an official list based on the Duden. Whenever they put out a new edition, we need to comb through it by hand to find all the new additions and deletions!
@@AlexDingsi am wondering how many words (inculding the conjugates/inflexions) there in German? I know people playing French Scrabble theey told me despite there are over 400k words in their lexicon less effort is required to study them
@@ohtani2024 Very similar to French in that regard. About the same number of inflections, and studying pays off more quickly because you basically learn 20 words at once!
@@iwersonsch5131 Well, but an extra A is not something you can trivially add to a word in German. Except if you can make a prefix with "Ab" or "An" this usually means finding an entirely different word. And prefixes in German can have the specialty that they kill your inflexions because many verbs split if you use them.
20:32 Did your opponent really play RÄNEKLN? That -KLN ending doesn't look like what I've used to see in German texts... or was it RÄNKELN that he played? That would look more like a plausible German word. EDIT: Also, there are cases where phonying is absolutely the right choice. Let me explain. When your opponent has played a phony bingo and you challenge it off the board, if in this instance your opponent would have had a valid bingo available which would give you a triple-triple or another huge play, phonying and hoping to get challenged would be the best option because simply passing your turn would be too obvious for your opponent, they would see you're up to something. But if you play a phony that plausibly looks like a mistake, your opponent might not suspect anything and still play the word that gives you a huge scoring bingo back.
I mistyped RÄNKELN on the board, sorry 🙂 Yeah, that's an edge case where playing a phony might be objectively best and not rely on suboptimal play from your opponent.
I watched a number of your videos. Looks like the bing rate in German scrabble is not higher than Collins? Also I do not understand why the W and Z are worth 3 points? They looked very terrible
About the same bingo rate, a little bit higher I think. Point values in Scrabble are based on the frequency in language, and on that basis 3 points for W and Z are justifiable, but it doesn't translate perfectly into usefulness in Scrabble. For the same reason, Ö and Y are overpowered. Big Ohtani fan here btw.
Z offers a great amount of prefixes. "ZU" for example, which you can prepend to an obscene amount of words. And in general it's not a rare letter by any means, neither is W.
@@AlexDingslooks like C, W, Z and Q are among the worst tiles in German! Also the M is pretty bad too? (like the G in english -em is a powerful suffix like -ing but there are just too many). Could you share more about the money tiles and poor tiles in German scrabble? Your videos are very intriguing i really enjoy scrabble contents for all languages not only English. Somehow I also noticed that Romanian Scrabble is pretty fun too they give B, G and Z 9-10 points but they actually appear frequently, but they gave D and P 2 points which are actually not as much more frequent than these power tiles. I feel like the person who designed the letter set should take the accountability that many mistakes are made like the French Z (10p), Catalan X (10p) and Italian G (8p) are also way overpowered. Ahaha I have no idea why I am so obsessed with it.....
Don't let anybody give you shit for having an accent. Accents are wonderful, especially from a linguistic perspective as a window into the phonology and speaking habits of a speaker's native language. I personally love the way native German speakers sound when speaking English.
Regarding viewing phonies as the correct move, that seems to be mostly a thing in North American scrabble, where the Double Challenge format is used - that means if you challenge a word that turns out to be correct you lose your turn. That means challenging is a lot more risky, and you can be in a situation where you would not want to challenge unless you are sure that the word in question indeed is phony, because losing your turn to a failed challenge means losing the game.
Also, if the opponent has an S, playing such a phony can be seen as a trapping attempt - they might try to hook their S to it, and then you can challenge your own phony, essentially to get an extra turn.
It’s really cool to learn about how differences in the structures of words in German vs English change the strategies in interesting ways! It makes me really interested watching more non-English games ❤
Excellent. I'm actually interested in learning to speak German and was thinking of trying to learn German Scrabble for the vocabulary help so your lists are a big help to me
Your accent is awesome BTW. I'm jealous of it :)
Very interesting and well made video, as an English scrabble player - especially the meanings of the words, what synergies are different in german and so on
Thanks, really enjoyed learning more about German Scrabble! Hope to see more videos about Scrabble in different languages.
Haha as a French scrabble player, we also have many of these TYPENDEM-like words featuring an English loanword with a French verb inflection !
i know this is really, really dumb, but this is alao really funny
so i noticed that like 12 years ago you made a domino cube FWR, and opened the comment section of that video
then i found a random verified youtuber "Kaplamino" who commented and clicked on their channel
i then found that they were a youtuber that recently made a comeback 3 weeks ago
i then went into the comment section of Kaplamino's most recent video, found another verified youtuber, realized it was one i had found many many years ago that i used to love, and subscribed for nostalgia.
thanks for letting all of this come full circle by going from domino creator to scrabble historian
I don't remember ever knowing the verb "pausen" even though my mum's job title was Tracer! (Pauserin?) I'm a fan of words like Pause that coincidentally have other meanings. Another one I learned recently is Esse (eat v/forge n).
It’s especially crazy if those words are opposites, like “umfahren”, which can mean “to drive around sth.” or “to run sth. over”. Only context and emphasis make it possible to figure out the intended meaning.
@@Leah_Sam This particular verb is even crazier in Italian, where "investire" does not only have the obvious meaning of "invest", but also "run over".
i don't play scrabble nor do i speak german, but I'm here because you deserve support and the little amount of your content i understand is very interesting man
I just wanted to say I really enjoyed this video, and I think your accent is very nice
Sorry to hear that fellow Germans make fun of your accent. I know it happens frequently, but we should be more forgiving towards each other. Having a slight accent is perfectly fine and as long as you enunciate properly (eg. correct intonation and no mumbling) nobody should have trouble understanding you. Your accent is actually very nice to listen to in my opinion.
A small question at the end: You said in on of your other videos that German Scrabble is based on the Duden. Does this mean there's no "scrabble dictionary" that comes with the game if you buy a German set? I've only ever played Scrabble once in my life with my French host family and the "dico" as they called it really made an impression on me lol. Unlike Nigel I had one year of French study under my belt but I hardly managed to find any words at all.
If German scrabble really used the Duden: What happens with words that were valid in previous iterations of the dictionary and aren't anymore?
No dictionary comes with the game because the game rules actually don't prescribe a dictionary, they just say that you should agree on one beforehand. The Duden is used for tournaments and our association has compiled an official list based on the Duden. Whenever they put out a new edition, we need to comb through it by hand to find all the new additions and deletions!
@@AlexDings Wow, so you have to keep up to date with it all the time! Hut ab
@@AlexDingsi am wondering how many words (inculding the conjugates/inflexions) there in German? I know people playing French Scrabble theey told me despite there are over 400k words in their lexicon less effort is required to study them
@@ohtani2024 Very similar to French in that regard. About the same number of inflections, and studying pays off more quickly because you basically learn 20 words at once!
Great that you plan to do more videos in english
i mean to me that rack looks like JAGEN(D)ÜR* so it kind of looked like a bingo rack to me
?
@@AlexDings well one letter away from a bingo, also JÜNGER with an extra A
@@iwersonsch5131 Well, but an extra A is not something you can trivially add to a word in German. Except if you can make a prefix with "Ab" or "An" this usually means finding an entirely different word. And prefixes in German can have the specialty that they kill your inflexions because many verbs split if you use them.
20:32 Did your opponent really play RÄNEKLN? That -KLN ending doesn't look like what I've used to see in German texts... or was it RÄNKELN that he played? That would look more like a plausible German word.
EDIT: Also, there are cases where phonying is absolutely the right choice. Let me explain. When your opponent has played a phony bingo and you challenge it off the board, if in this instance your opponent would have had a valid bingo available which would give you a triple-triple or another huge play, phonying and hoping to get challenged would be the best option because simply passing your turn would be too obvious for your opponent, they would see you're up to something. But if you play a phony that plausibly looks like a mistake, your opponent might not suspect anything and still play the word that gives you a huge scoring bingo back.
I mistyped RÄNKELN on the board, sorry 🙂
Yeah, that's an edge case where playing a phony might be objectively best and not rely on suboptimal play from your opponent.
I watched a number of your videos. Looks like the bing rate in German scrabble is not higher than Collins? Also I do not understand why the W and Z are worth 3 points? They looked very terrible
About the same bingo rate, a little bit higher I think. Point values in Scrabble are based on the frequency in language, and on that basis 3 points for W and Z are justifiable, but it doesn't translate perfectly into usefulness in Scrabble. For the same reason, Ö and Y are overpowered. Big Ohtani fan here btw.
Z offers a great amount of prefixes. "ZU" for example, which you can prepend to an obscene amount of words. And in general it's not a rare letter by any means, neither is W.
is Ö better than english X or Z
Probably about as good as them
@@AlexDingslooks like C, W, Z and Q are among the worst tiles in German! Also the M is pretty bad too? (like the G in english -em is a powerful suffix like -ing but there are just too many). Could you share more about the money tiles and poor tiles in German scrabble? Your videos are very intriguing i really enjoy scrabble contents for all languages not only English. Somehow I also noticed that Romanian Scrabble is pretty fun too they give B, G and Z 9-10 points but they actually appear frequently, but they gave D and P 2 points which are actually not as much more frequent than these power tiles. I feel like the person who designed the letter set should take the accountability that many mistakes are made like the French Z (10p), Catalan X (10p) and Italian G (8p) are also way overpowered. Ahaha I have no idea why I am so obsessed with it.....
My grumblequirk is that I complain about the four M's. Three M's would be bad enough.
Dein Mikro ist in diesem Video irgendwie ziemlich leise. Ansonsten gutes Video :-)