2

I've been playing a bit of Scrabble recently, and it seems there's a few Chinese words which are considered valid:

  • LI 里 (the unit of distance)
  • QI 气 ("vital energy")
  • QIN 琴 (musical instrument; not 秦 which is a proper noun)
  • GUQIN 古琴 (musical instrument)
  • ERHU 二胡 (musical instrument)
  • QIGONG 气功 (method for cultivating 气)
  • GOJI 枸杞 (berry; gǒuqǐ)

So these are considered (for the purposes of Scrabble) English words imported from Chinese; loanwords, I suppose.

(You can check their validity e.g. here or here.)

Mostly just out of curiosity, I'm wondering if there's any more for this list. I'm guessing there'll be more, especially musical instruments, vegetable names, lunar calendar terms (?), etc.

Question: What are the Chinese words which are valid in Scrabble?

Feel free to go beyond Mandarin Chinese; I'm just not familiar with non-Mandarin Chinese.

Becky 李蓓
  • 16,291
  • 9
  • 49
  • 165

3 Answers3

1

Generally, if you can't find a word in most of the major English dictionaries, you should consider it invalid.

Scrabble has its own dictionary checker online, which is the ultimate authority on what words are accepted and what words are not in the game.

I knew 叩头 (Kotow) is a valid word, and I've just found out that 二胡 (erhu) is a valid word too. I didn't think it was before because it is not found in the dictionaries I checked

From this fact, I concluded even a valid Scrabble word might not be officially accepted by English dictionaries

Tang Ho
  • 78,643
  • 4
  • 28
  • 71
1

No chinese word is valid in the official scrabble rules, as it is a game based on valid english words.

That said, every language has borrow words from other languages, and english words with chinese etymology are no exception. Not only will you see some like you have mentioned, but you will also see words like joss or brainwash that are chinese origin but not represented in the form of pinyin, I recommend looking up words with chinese etymology in general if this is a topic of interest for you. （╹◡╹）

zagrycha
  • 2,285
  • 3
  • 15
1

WUSHU 武術 and WUXIA 武俠 are also accepted QINGHAOSU 青蒿素 is another

Tong
  • 11