Thais master Scrabble without English
Ranked #3 in the world, he has memorised 90%+ of an English dictionary but only knows the meanings of a few words.
Ranked #3 in the world, he has memorised 90%+ of an English dictionary but only knows the meanings of a few words.
GAMES & EDUCATION
Thais master Scrabble without English
1/07/2016
AFP News agency
Trophy that the winner of the King's Cup, the Thai national Scrabble competition in the English language, receives (Source: Wikipedia)
Since the 1980s, Scrabble using the English language has grown greatly in popularity in Thailand.
Thailand has risen to dominance of the game in Asia, being the only Asian country to field potential world champions.
Yet, paradoxically Thailand's Scrabble masters are not very skilled in English writing, reading, speaking or listening.
They can visually identify a lot of English words though, typically 100,000, far more than your average English native speaker.
How could this be so?
RANKED NO. 3 IN THE WORLD
Komol Panyasophonlert struggles to string together an English sentence.
The 31-year-old Thai computer programmer, however, is still hoping to be crowned champion of the word lover's favourite boardgame, Scrabble, this week.
Mr Komol is ranked No. 3 in the world.
He is one of several top-ranked Thais hoping to showcase their talents in the King's Cup tournament, which kicked off in Bangkok on Thursday (read more on King's Cup here).
"I memorise small words first, then big words later," he explained in Thai, adding that he tries to spend at least half an hour each day hitting the books.
With some 6,000 players set to attend, the King's Cup is the globe's biggest Scrabble competition and an indication of its wide popularity in Thailand.
Scrabble tournament.
THAILAND ONLY ASIAN COUNTRY TO FIELD WORLD CHAMPIONS
The game is a favourite among schoolteachers who use it as a language-learning tool, and Thailand is the only Asian country to field world champions, despite its notoriously low levels of English proficiency.
Amnuay Ploysangngam, who founded Thailand's first Scrabble association in the 80s and is credited with popularising the game, said today nearly three-quarters of schools have Scrabble clubs.
"We never expected that one day we would become world champions," he told AFP.
SCRABBLE LIKE MATH, REQUIRES ANALYTICAL MIND
None of the elite Thai players of Scrabble is a fluent English speaker.
Their success is a testament to what really drives victories in the top tiers of the game: an analytical mind.
"At the highest level Scrabble is a math game. It's like poker. It's all about probabilities and managing a rack (of tiles)," said John Williams a former director of the US's National Scrabble Association.
Letters placed on the game board during the game. (AFP photo)
DON'T HAVE TO KNOW DEFINITIONS
"You don't have to know the definitions," he added.
With players at the King's Cup laying down words like "ZOOTY," -- a synonym for flashy -- and "VUGS" -- a small rock cavity -- even native speakers of English would probably fail to recognise their own language on the Scrabble board.
The world's best Scrabble players commit to memory up to 100,000 words, a figure more than double the lexicon of an average English-speaking adult.
"What makes (the Thais) extraordinary is they have no context [to learn the words] and are starting at a 40,000 word deficit," said Williams.
THREE TIMES WORLD CHAMPION FROM NEW ZEALAND IS EXPECTED TO WIN
The Thais' definitely have a home field advantage.
This year's King's Cup title, however, is expected to go to the famously shy New Zealander Nigel Richards who currently dominates the game and is considered the best player in the game's history (read more here).
The three-time world champion has won the King's Cup 11 times.
He stunned the francophone world last July when he also won the French Scrabble championship.
He doesn't speak French and only spent nine weeks studying the official French Scrabble dictionary.
Thailand's Mr Komol, who lost to Richards in the 2013 world championship, still remembers his favourite word from that match -- GAZUMPED -- meaning "to swindle".
Not that Mr Komol will be using it much. "I already forget what it means," he said.
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