Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for November 18, 2021

Only if you’re playing a Cymraeg version of scrabble.

Wait really?

CRWTH could be a Polish word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crwth

What do you mean, Pig? W and ŵ are vowels.

Didn’t the Welsh sell all their vowels to the French?

No, Pig, that’s “tk tht, stpd vwls.”

And the name Gladys originated in Wales, where they spelled it Gwl-!

Finnish speaking People would disagree. You can’t forgo the use of vowels, they even use 8 different ones a [a], o [o], u [u], e [e], i [i], ä [æ], ö [ø], and y [y]. You might perhaps ignore the consonants.

Älä rääkkää kääkkää kääkänrääkkääjä! En mä kääkkää rääkkääkkään. Älä kääkätä kääkänrääkkäämisestä. (coutesy of https://telefinn.blogspot.com/2012/07/vowel-fest.html)

I am consistently impressed by the use of this social platform without being polarizing…thanks Mr Pastis!

This strip’s new title: “Vital Social Issues ‘n’ Stuff with Rat.”

Kids, go tell your mothers you can, too, learn things from comic strips.

I have a granddaughter with an Irish middle name. I can’t pronounce it and I don’t remember how it is spelled.

What matters is — great bacon comes from a well-fed pig.

A. E. I o u $10.

that’s life saving for sure

Another valid Scrabble word is OXYPHENBUTAZONE. Played in the proper spot on the board (i.e., along any of the four edges), it combines letter scores with various bonus squares and the “bingo” for using all seven tiles in your rack for a possible score of 1458 points (1778 if it locks into certain specific crossing words as well). It has actually been possible in the past for a player to do it in an actual game.

(Since it obviously has more than seven letters, it relies on a few internal words such as HEN, BUT and/or ONE to have already been played in appropriate spots in earlier rounds of the game.)

Wikipedia’s article on the word describes it as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, but spends almost as much space describing the word’s significance in Scrabble.

‘W’ is a vowel; it’s literally a double u!

Its a song by counting crowths

Who needs vowels? I went to Wales once, and I bought a booklet about a place I visited. The booklet was in both Welsh and English, and I noticed the word “hw” on the Welsh side.

I just checked. “syzygy” is a valid scrabble word and just uses “sometimes Y” as a vowel.

Not valid in the US – it’s Welsh!

As plenty of people have already observed, it’s a real word. I also verified that it’s in the Collins list of official scrabble words. But that book isn’t very informative; it lists the words without defining them. I had to go to the Internet to find what it actually means.

I did guess, though, that if it was a real word, it would be Welsh.

Looks Welsh

Rat and Pig are always on different pages….they’ll never get “it”!

Really? I’m writing that one down.

Some issues I would like to discuss is the system and low standards of Hollywood, especially when it comes to animated films.

Can Rat Wear Trousers Here?

Then there’s Musk’s kid X ae x=12 or some such.

Rhythm. Another word without any vowels.

There are truths, and then there are are trths.

Coincidentally, just yesterday I had occasion to post this on a different strip:

I’d contend that y is always a vowel, because most of the time it’s pronounced like a long ē. Try it yourself: ē-ule, lan-ē-ard, poetr-ē. The exceptions are when it’s like a long ī (as in den-ī) or a short ĭ (as in acr-ĭ-lic) or when it’s just an unpronounced helper letter, as in stay.

Same deal with the w, which is typically pronounced o͞o or o͡u (o͞o-et; c-o͡u-er; whiskey, actually pronounced h-o͞o-iskey), except when it too is an unpronounced helper vowel, as in blow. This ignores the most frequently cited use of w as a vowel, in the Welsh word cwm (pronounced ko͞om, a steep-sided hollow), because I was concentrating on English usage, and all bets are off once we start introducing foreign languages.

This strip makes me want to have a vowel movement.

My Scrabble software says yes. Now, if I can only remember it when I need it.

Looks Welsh.

♪♫ “…and sometimes Y and W.” ♫♪

The only Welsh words i know is the words in Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau which is the anthem of the country

“Vowels are A E I O U and sometimes Y and W.” Learned that 65 years ago in grammar school. Never got an example of a word using W like that until today though……

Welsh vowels: A E I O U W Y. Ah Eh Ee Oh Ee (somewhat like German umlaut U) Oo Uh Alphabet: A B C CH D DD E F FF G NG H I L LL M N O P PH R RH S T TH U W Y. For us the Celtic languages are a tad weird. Y can be pronounced Uh, Ee or Ih. Yep. Those are double consonants. F is V and FF is F.

There are language-specific Scrabble letter sets with extra consonants and accented vowels needed to spell words in their language.

So is “antidisenstablishmentarianism”.

But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that one either.

My dad had a college football teammate named Ckrypzyck (IIRC; that’s pretty close, anyway); apparently it was quite amuzing to kisten the announcers at away games trying to pronounce it (it’s “SKRIPzik”)

My late step-father (died of Covid last year) was a master at making up words in Scrabble. Two that I can remember: Zot and Oho. The first one, Zot, is used often in BC with the anteaters but I don’t think it is an actual word.

“crwth” was a valid word long before Scrabble existed.

“Cwm” is also a valid Scrabble word. (It’s a steep-walled valley formed by the action of glaciers, also known as a cirque.)

Rat must have grown up in Bala Cynwyd.

Croc Power!!!!

Per Google Trends, no significant change in looking up “Crwth”. Yet. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=crwth%20definition

Covefe!

Fel y byddai’r Cymry yn dweud, perlau yw hwn cyn y moch …

If Rat continues to give valid Scrabble words, I’ll start listening a lot more.

Past participle of crawl.

@Richard S RussellAEIOUYW are all vowels in American English. Depending upon where they appear in any particular word, they can be different vowels or vowel sounds slid together.

E.g., ‘yes’ is ‘ee eh ss’, and ‘out’ is ‘ah (o) oo t’ and ‘well’ is ‘oo eh ll’ and ‘ate’ is ‘eh ee t’ .

At the beginning of a word, W is typically ‘oo’ slid into whatever vowel follows it, and Y is typically ‘ee’ slid into whatever vowel follows it. Knowing this may help the non-native speaker more than the old AEIOU and sometimes Y and W list of vowels.

Admittedly, I am a physicist and mathematician rather than a philologist, but my wife (whose profile this is) and I both speak more than one language, and often have discussions like this.

Once again my horizons are broadened and my vocabulary expanded by Pearls Before Swine!Thank you, Rat!

And the CRWTH shall set you free.

I played a crwth once, very badly; I’ll stick to the guitar! (I’m rubbish on the five-string banjo too, but I don’t think there’s a connection.)

It is? Must be a Welshman who put it in the Scrabble dictionary.

A lot of chatter about missing vowels, but nobody really answered the question. Can you use a Welsh word in Scrabble? At least in the American version.

I would take any information gained from this comic with a grain of salt.

QUONE

Cwm and crwth are both English words, so says the internet, and we all know it’s never wrong.

It IS! Yep, had to look it up.

I have never liked working the Crowd Scene. And now I think I know why! Imprecations upon thee, Cartoon-Boy!

Also, CWM. Don’t believe me? Look it up.

Goat has a point, but you have to do it right. Don’t be the hammer that only sees nails. Or a Rat seeking redress of his own pettiness to. See the 11/19/2021 strip. (I skipped yesterday and am playing catch up).

What’s wrong with vowels

it’s not shiny enough already??