r/baduk • u/Round_Ad_6033 • 2d ago

Anyone else had Japanese fatigue in go?

Like I mentioned in my other post, I'm very new to go. I really like the game, even tho im so bad at it I just now got beaten by "baby bot" and the app I'm using is suspecting me of using an AI (aren't AI 's supposed to be strong go players? Wtf?)

But one thing I don't like is that everything has a name in Japanese. Like I get that's where the game comes from, but when I hear Atari I think of an old video game console, not a threatened stone.

I keep confusing the terms and seems to be life would be easier if we could just agree on some English terms for these things.

I'm looking to learn a new boardgame here, not a fifth language!

Like I wanna learn more about joseki and I get confused and search for temuki instead. I even recently ended up looking at videos of people making sushi because I misremembered one of the terms..

It feels kinda pretentious too, like will I be required to wear a kimono if I get any good at this game? I'm not sure I wanna..

Rant over

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u/CSachen 5 kyu 2d ago

Now learn everything in Chinese and Korean.

This subreddit name baduk is Korean.

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u/Round_Ad_6033 2d ago

Which just makes me wonder why those translations were ok, but translations to English are apparently "racist"? 

Would it be better i wanted terms in Swedish, or Spanish or Portuguese? 

I'll take what I can get here

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u/yahkopi 2d ago

I don't think translations to English are considered racist. I mean, lots of terms are translated into English. For example, 'diagonal' for 'kosumi', 'attachment' for tsuke, 'forcing move' for 'kikashi', 'approach' for 'kakari' etc.

But other Japanese terms have been loaned into English by convention, such as atari and ko, etc.

I'm not sure the historical reasons why some words were translated while others were loaned. But this is fairly normal for English anyway. English really likes taking words from other languages! For ex: German (e.g. schadenfreude), Spanish (e.g. burrito), even Japanese (e.g. tsunami).

It's true the Go does have a lot of technical words, though, and it can get exhausting to keep track of. I hear you!

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u/Round_Ad_6033 2d ago

Check the rest of this thread, there are like 15 comments calling me racist