Foreign Language Scrabble Games

Scrabble is sold in 121 countries around the world in 30 languages.  Over 150 million games have been sold worldwide.  Scrabble can be found, sometimes under a different name depending on the country, in the following languages:

• Afrikaans
• Arabic
• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English (Hasbro)
• Esperanto
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Italian
• Malaysian
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese 
• Romanian
• Russian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish (Hasbro)
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Welsh

What goes into figuring out which letters to use?

When Scrabble was being created during the Great Depression, the inventor, Alfred Butts, carefully read the front page of the New York Times to rank the frequency of the letters used.  He found that the most common letter used was E, and that vowels were used much more frequently than consonants.  He then assigned values to each letter.

When translating Scrabble into languages other than English, great care is taken to measure the frequency and distribution of letters within a particular language.  One can't simply use the same distribution of letters found in the English language when creating a game in a language that uses the same alphabet, such as Afrikaans.  One must consider word endings, what makes a plural in that language and much more.  Even languages that use a different alphabet than English but the same as another language, such as Swedish and Finnish, must be translated in a way that accomodates letter distribution within each language.

Scrabble is a great learning tool when learning a language.  It really makes you concentrate when figuring out which words to play.  

Swedish is my second language and I now play Scrabble, or Alfapet as it is called in Sweden, with native Swedish speakers.  It is a huge challenge!  When speaking Swedish I can get away with mistakes here and there, but when playing against native speakers it's a whole 'nother ball game, or word game.  

It is not a measure of how well you know a language, as some people are fluent in a language but terrible Scrabble players, however, it is a pleasant way to practice and socialize.

Foreign language Scrabble games are great for homeschoolers, language clubs and keeping your skills sharp in another language.

Letter distribution in a few languages:

Greek

• 65 letters worth 1 point: Α (12), Ε (8), Η (7), Ι (8), Ν (6), Ο (9), Σ (7) και Τ (8)
• 17 letters worth 2 points: Κ (4), Π (4), Ρ (5) και Υ (4)
• 9 letters worth 3 points: Λ (3), Μ (3) και Ω (3)
• 4 letters worth 4 points: Γ (2), και Δ (2)
• 3 γράμματα (blank)

Polish

• 0 points: blank (x2)
• 1 point: A (x9), E (x7), I (x8), N (x5), O (x6), R (x4), S (x4), W (x4), Z (x5)
• 2 points: C (x3), D (x3), K(x3), L(x3), M(x3), P (x3), T (x3), Y (x4)
• 3 points: B (x2), G(x2), H(x2), J (x2), Ł (x2), U (x2)
• 5 points: Ą (x1), Ę (x1), F (x1), Ó (x1), Ś (x1), Ż (x1)
• 6 points: Ć (x1)
• 7 points: Ń (x1)
• 9 points: Ź (x1)

 Swedish

Letter, Points, Distribution

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