Mongol Mama

Danielle and I are bingeing again—this time on Scrabble, which we both consider to be a much more profitable thing than say, “Lost” or “CSI” or any of our previous binges… I’ve found, after five years of living in Mongolia, that my vocabulary just isn’t what it used to be—either because I’m used to limiting my vocabulary to make myself more easily understood by English learners, or because certain Mongolian words have crept in and are trying to displace their English “counterparts”—and this is not a good thing my age. We’ve toyed with making “A Scrabble game a day keeps senility at bay” our slogan, but decided that at this point in life, senility and loss of vocabulary are two very different things. At any rate, Scrabble is indeed working its magic as I am finding words like “gist” and “orb” rolling off my tongue. Granted (Mom and Ben), these aren’t high scoring words, but they can prove useful!

I am afraid, however, that the makers of the “Scrabble Dictionary” are biased against Mongolian vocabulary. Why are words like “kumiss” (fermented camel or horse milk—-incidentally there are five accepted Scrabble spellings for this: koumis, koumiss, koumys, koumyss, kumiss) and “yurt” (the Russian name for a Mongolian felt tent) permissible yet “ger” (the Mongolian name for Mongolian felt tents) and “airag” (fermented horse milk) aren’t? It’s rather unfair, if you think about it. Speaking of unfair…Tom thinks it quite rude that Danielle and I don’t permit him to join in the fun, as a result, he occasionally tries to eat the letter tiles.