Aa, aal, adit, aline, avo, azo, azon... Do you know these words? If you do, it's probably from playing Scrabble.

There's only a weak sense in which I "know" these words. I have a vague memory that aa is a Hawaiian word for a kind of cooled lava, and that aline is an obsolete spelling of align. But the rest? No idea. They're just convenient when you have a rack of letters that don't combine into a normal word. 

By a "normal" word I mean a word I might plausibly use in a sentence, in ordinary conversation. What kind of conversationalist do you imagine I'd be if I did hold forth with typical Scrabble words, at least those allowed in the game that runs on my computer?

I'd hem and haw quite a bit, using words like oh, ooh, ah, aah, hm, hmm, and mm. I'd annoy you by saying pst, psst, sh, shh, pht, tsk, and pfui. You might say, Aargh, which I'd be happy to respond to, but I'd just shake my head if you said, Grr.

I'd casually drop archaic words into the conversation, mentioning that I was oorie or ourie last month (shivering with cold, not to be confused with houri, a beautiful young woman) when visiting a cwm (a cirque or valley). These words aren't really foreign--they tend to be Scottish, Welsh, or Middle English. Does that mean they count as being English as well? Iwis! Or perhaps ywis! (Certainly!)

And I'd sometimes resort to actual hoity-toity foreign words, though with no special consistency. If you were a Dutch woman I'd happily refer to you as Vrouw. If you were a Spanish-speaking man, I'd use Senor (even without the tilde). If you were a German woman, however, you might be out of luck. I could call you Fraulein (without the umlaut) but not Frau (oddly enough, I can say Hausfrau, or housewife, but not simply wife).

I'm very flexible when it comes to borrowed words from languages that don't use the Roman alphabet, and I especially love words with unusual letters like Q and J. I can talk about qi, qanats, qadis, and qaids. I can tell you all about jin, jins, jinn, jinns, jinni, jinnis, jinnee, djin, djins, djinn, djinni, djinns, and djinny.

You'd eventually get bored if not irritated while talking to me. But there's not much you can do about it. If you say Shit or Fuck, I simply won't listen. (I won't even tolerate fart.) You might try calling me names, but few of those will work either. No squaw or goy or other comparable epithets. Bint, however, would be okay. I have odd sensibilities.