Time to find an Arabic Scrabble champion

Organisers are on the look out for Arabic speakers - Emirati or expat Arabs - as they seek to bring the event to a new audience.

DUBAI // Organisers of the Gulf Scrabble Championships are hoping to have people competing using Arabic for the first time.

Emirati and expatriate Arabic speakers of all ages are being scouted to bring the annual event to a new audience.

“People are already playing Arabic Scrabble at home,” said Nikhil Soneja, the chairman of the UAE Scrabble Club.

“But Arabic Scrabble as a competition has not yet been set up. There hasn’t been a combined effort to do this.

“Competitive Scrabble is for everyone, not just kids. It would be nice to expand it to Arabic. It makes sense to do this here.”

The Gulf Scrabble Championships (GSC) have taken place every year since 1991. The first 19 editions were in Bahrain, with Oman hosting the 20th. Dubai has hosted it since 2011.

According to the event’s website, the GSC is the only world-ranked tournament for the mind sport in the Arab world.

The board game in Arabic is already very popular, according to one online retailer.

“It is one of the top five best-selling board games on the site,” said Bader Ataya, relationship director at mumzworld.com.

“A lot of Arab and western expatriates buy the game because it helps their kids hone their Arabic skills.

“It is a great way to practise the language at home while making it fun.”

The structure of the game, rules and skills required are the same, regardless of which version is played.

The Arabic language has up to four different ways of writing each letter in its alphabet, but Scrabble uses an isolated form – similar to that used in Arabic crosswords – that allows players to create words out of letters that are not connected to each other.

Scrabblers welcomed the idea of playing in a competition.

“Training kids and adults to play competitively would be brilliant,” said Joanne Seymour, who is doing a doctorate on the teaching of Arabic in Dubai and plays Arabic Scrabble regularly.

“It has such knock-on effects on all aspects of literacy. I play a lot with friends, some of whom are native. We use dictionaries and help each other out, so it’s not hugely competitive, but it can be.”

Mr Soneja hopes to raise the profile of the game through educators, bilingual Scrabble fans and social media.

“Even English Scrabble was around for many years before people thought of clubs and professional games,” he said. “It is a question of providing the infrastructure. We hope to have English and Arabic Scrabble side by side by next year’s Gulf Championships.”

Teachers in the capital introduced the game to pupils in grade 6, who are aged 10 and 11, as an extracurricular learning resource in September last year.

The Arabic Scrabble Project is in six schools in Abu Dhabi to improve Arabic skills, make the classroom environment more exciting and help children to develop their vocabulary and writing skills.

But schools are not the only ones looking to train Scrabblers. Public colleges also plan to introduce the game to their students.

The Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology will introduce the game in September this year to its foundation-year students in the women’s and men’s colleges.

“It is very relevant and helps students understand the origins of Arabic words,” said Basel Badran, who teaches self-exploration in Arabic.

“Classical Arabic is not used so often today. Using Arabic Scrabble could reintroduce students to the classical language and put the language into context. They would also use a dictionary, which would be an added benefit.

“Letter association helps students understand how Arabic words are constructed. It is a stem of three letters that make a word.

“Knowing the stem helps students increase the letters of the words to get other variations of the word.”

Mr Badran hopes that competitive play will be the next step once the game becomes popular among students.