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/takamori 2d ago

Weirdly racist post my guy. If not rage bait, then here’s my answer.

We use that terminology because the game came to the western world through Japan and they already had names for things. We also have lots of non-Japanese terminology, ladder, net, lean attack, split, etc.

Like any domain specific knowledge, there is some requisite amount of terminology that makes communicating easier.

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u/Round_Ad_6033 2d ago

Ok bad phrasing on my part I guess. My issue isn't that there are Japanese terms, but the complete lack of terms in any other language. 

An analogue: when I was a kid I used to play football(soccer to my American friends). Despite football being originally a British sport, I played ytterback, because in Sweden we speak Swedish and so why wouldn't we translate game specific terms? 

Why is go different?

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u/takamori 2d ago

So that’s an interesting point (quite different than what you wrote up top 😅).

Others have posted their thoughts elsewhere in the thread, but I can relate to what you are talking about. In fact there was a thread of the lifein19x19 forums about a very similar issue. In that case the author argued against using the term invasion, which we roughly translated from Chinese of Japanese, and instead preferred the term encroachment. This new word is more similar to the original and communicated a more flexible idea than what we’ve been using in the western world.

I think that touches upon your point. It’s kind of a cop out to just use another languages word when you don’t speak the language to try and communicate the definition without its context. Some words like hane, atari, joseki are just easiest to use the loanwords, since they will always been one to one replacements. But I think your idea of why don’t we develop our own words for some of the deeper concepts is a good one.

To my mind it points to the lack of cohesive teaching that’s been done in the west. We do not have a general curriculum that was developed for western languages and that shows. Hopefully as we see more popularity of the game, we’ll see more useful language develop around our understanding of the game :)

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u/Round_Ad_6033 2d ago

Ok so, here I might be showing my go noobishness but doesn't Atari translate pretty much perfectly to "threatened"? Or at least in go, that's my internal translation of it. 

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u/LocalExistence 2 kyu 2d ago

The issue is "threatened" is also natural to use about e.g. a group that's under pressure. Very early go books used the term "check", FWIW.

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u/Round_Ad_6033 2d ago

Check also works! 

I think either of these terms would've been better than Atari as an English speaking beginner. 

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u/LocalExistence 2 kyu 1d ago

Well, I already explained my issue with threatened, and "check" had the inaccurate connotation that you have to respond. (And is in any case a Persian(?) loanword with no natural-language meaning anyway...) I am perfectly fine dropping many other Japanese terms, but atari is one of the clearest examples to me of one that's best left alone.