Han4yu3 Pin1yin1 Scrabble

M

mei2qiang2

举人
Dear fellow Chinese users/students,

Has anyone out there seen or heard of a Hànyǔ Pīnyīn
Scrabble game? I've done some searching and found these.

Hanyu Pinyin Scrabble by BANG SOON WAN
http://www.languagebooks.com.au/categories/01/25/18/
-the book isn't there, so I e-mailed them.

Chinese Scrabble game (taken from http://lbis.kenyon.edu/services/mailarc ... /2111.html)
http://www.cheng-tsui.com/newwebsite/ca ... l#zhongwen
-I don't see anything on the page, and I think it's for characters anyway.

Chinese Scrabble Demo Board
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/5794/favorites.html
-dead link

Chinese Squabble
http://www.chinesesquabble.com
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi ... le&start=0
-a very impressive looking game for learning Traditional characters (but no Pīnyīn )
 
G

George Herzog

举人
First impressions

I teach English to Chinese first language students and often try to use Scrabble.

The following are my first impressions on a 'Chinese scrabble'

1. How do you make tiles with 2000-7000 characters?

2. Since most Chinese words that are more than one character are bound pairs, how do you have an 'open matrix' to build upon? [I think you need at least three characters to be freed from grid lock].

3. 2nd language users are similar to children playing Scrabble. They have a competative disadvantage with more mature or 1st language users. Usually, I exclude myself from actually playing with my students as they are made to feel quite stupid.

4. Like crossword puzzles, I strongly suspect that matrix letter games of any sort do not lend themselves to transfer to Chinese characters.

5. Having said all that negative stuff, I would like to suggest that the Chinese characters do have components that can create a completely unique kind of game in terms of creating characters from the fundamental components. I suspect that traditional Chinese would lend itself to such a game better than simplified [because of the additional details].

The only question is that change image size. For example, if you take the character for Woman alone and combine it with Child to create good, the width is reduced by half while the height is retained. This fact [along with the huge inventory of characters] implied that any Chinese character game might best be created for computer. A board game is really out of the question.

So....
maybe the reason you cannot locate it is that it is what was once known as 'Vaporware'. [simply a computer idea that never went anywhere]
 
M

mei2qiang2

举人
Thanks George, but what I'm looking for is Scrabble using Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, not characters.

I did track down the author to "Hanyu Pinyin Scrabble by BANG SOON WAN" but haven't gotten a copy of the book yet. Also, "Zhongwen Pinzi Youxi (Chinese Word Scrabble/Upper-lower Format)" http://www.languagebooks.com.au/items/29/97/38/ is available, but I'm not sure what it is so I e-mailed them.

Actually, the "component" game you mentioned is available and I've got one coming.
http://www.chinesesquabble.com
 
G

George Herzog

举人
Martin Gardner and games

Scrabble is one of the most sucessful western games as it can be played in many languages, it is educational, and it is family oriented.

Along with Monopoly, there are few other 'brand name' games that have ever enjoyed such sucess.

I really wonder if a PinYin style game would do well as you have so many homophones in Chinese.

None the less, you could use a conventional Scrabble board if you could add tiles that have the tonal stress on them [numbers 0-4 would work better than the traditional marks that could be turned upside-down].

The problem here is conficts with Scrabble's copyright. If you use much of their design, they still make quite a bit of money and will challenge you to ownership rights.

Martin Gardner [no longer alive] of Scientific American fame has written more that almost anyone on game design. There are other options for board design and you might get something from one of his 30 plus books.
A triangular, pentangle, or hexagonal board might give you the freedom you want. And, obviously you cannot use all the Scrabble letters in PinYin.

So that would give you a different board, different tile shape, and a different set of tiles. At that point, the similarities begin to fade and you could defend your own product as unique.

Still, I suspect the market would be far thinner that one for actual Chinese charcters. Good luck.

I thought you were looking for something that actual Chinese parents and children would play endlessly
 
S

sfrrr

状元
Ask miltownkid about Chinese Squabble. I bought a set and have been playing with it for a couple of months (?) now. Nice, nice, nice, but not Scrabble. More like a very strange form of rummy.

Sandra
 
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