Going back to the 1970s I recall Jewish leaders/advocates saying there's nothing wrong with 'Jew' as a noun, and they would rather be identified as 'a Jew' than 'a Jewish person' . (Nobody really wanted to support 'Jewess' though I think there were those who did say they accepted it, out of consistently.) As a verb, 'I jewed him down' (bargained intensely) was then and remains now quite offensive.
Once I personally was told "You're no Jew" as an intended compliment or expression of thanks for something generous the speaker thought I had done for him. He immediately apologized and said that was just the way everyone around him talked growing up, and he didn't intend the implicit insulting view. I believed him, mostly, but it was a little awkward.
In this podcast, you make a kind of statement, the construction of which has always been a pet peeve of mine and since you are a linguist, I wonder if there's more to it than I had previously thought. You said that "all words are not allowed" in Scrabble. To me, that sounds like you're making a universal statement about "all words", meaning that there are no words which are allowed in Scrabble, which is obviously not true. I would think that you meant to say "Not all words are allowed" which indicates that there are a certain subset of words not allowed. I find people making this mistake in sentence construction all the time and it irritates me, but again, it seems like something you would know something about.
My Vietnamese wife is HIGHLY offended that you repeatedly used the phrase "slippery slope"... Hehehe. Just kidding, she's an adult, and is affected not at all by sounds people make with their mouths, nor words that she must be "forced to stare at" on the page or on a Scrabble board.
When a couple of words that begin with "f" were deleted from the Official Scrabble Dictionary (v. 5, perhaps), I just decided that, in my house, v.4 would be the "house" version and the people I play with accept that.
To my knowledge it has never been permissible to play "JEW" in Scrabble because of the rule prohibiting proper nouns. (I lost a game about a decade ago over this word.)
Going back to the 1970s I recall Jewish leaders/advocates saying there's nothing wrong with 'Jew' as a noun, and they would rather be identified as 'a Jew' than 'a Jewish person' . (Nobody really wanted to support 'Jewess' though I think there were those who did say they accepted it, out of consistently.) As a verb, 'I jewed him down' (bargained intensely) was then and remains now quite offensive.
Once I personally was told "You're no Jew" as an intended compliment or expression of thanks for something generous the speaker thought I had done for him. He immediately apologized and said that was just the way everyone around him talked growing up, and he didn't intend the implicit insulting view. I believed him, mostly, but it was a little awkward.
In this podcast, you make a kind of statement, the construction of which has always been a pet peeve of mine and since you are a linguist, I wonder if there's more to it than I had previously thought. You said that "all words are not allowed" in Scrabble. To me, that sounds like you're making a universal statement about "all words", meaning that there are no words which are allowed in Scrabble, which is obviously not true. I would think that you meant to say "Not all words are allowed" which indicates that there are a certain subset of words not allowed. I find people making this mistake in sentence construction all the time and it irritates me, but again, it seems like something you would know something about.
Have I been wrong this whole time?
Always thought it strange “nazi” is playable especially in light of “jew” not being playable. Maybe it’s part of never forgetting.
My Vietnamese wife is HIGHLY offended that you repeatedly used the phrase "slippery slope"... Hehehe. Just kidding, she's an adult, and is affected not at all by sounds people make with their mouths, nor words that she must be "forced to stare at" on the page or on a Scrabble board.
So 'tar baby' is a tar baby.
When a couple of words that begin with "f" were deleted from the Official Scrabble Dictionary (v. 5, perhaps), I just decided that, in my house, v.4 would be the "house" version and the people I play with accept that.
I enjoyed this episode and the discussion.
Scrabble has always been one of our favorite family games. I wrote about this here:
https://bruck.translation.org.il/the-games-we-play-with-words/
To my knowledge it has never been permissible to play "JEW" in Scrabble because of the rule prohibiting proper nouns. (I lost a game about a decade ago over this word.)