Japanese syllables all end in vowels, with the exception of the "ん" sound, which is pretty similar to "n" in English.

Because of this fact alone, I think Japanese is the easiest to pronounce between Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

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be immersed

Not baffling at all (Kyoto vs Tokyo)

English speakers often have trouble with phonemes in some word position but not others. For example, may take some practice to be able to say "tsar" even though they have no trouble at all with "cats" << the "ts" sound often occurs in the middle and at the end of English words but there is no English word that starts with it >>

Languages are like that.

Yes, languages are like that. And some have trickier nuances than others. I don't mean to imply that Japanese pronunciation is 100% easy to get perfect; just that it's easier than Chinese or Korean.

Of the three, Chinese seems trickiest to me. In Korean, double consonants take a bit of time to get, and then understanding pronunciation nuances with various letters following the batchim can be tricky. But I think getting the tones right in Chinese is harder than all that. Admittedly, I have limited experience in Chinese pronunciation, but it seemed tough when I tried.

When I was first learning Japanese, basic pronunciation was never hard at all - grammar was tricky to wrap my head around for awhile.

That being said, if you want to pronounce Japanese like a native speaker, that takes some work. But that's true for all of these languages.

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be immersed

Indeed. Anyone who has ever looked at a thesaurus will see that English is full of words that essentially mean the same thing, for example big and large or understand and comprehend. Given the choice, when English has been offered words from different sources, it has often taken both. English likes words. If it is willing to take in a new word when it already has a good one for a particular thing or object ... thought or idea... it should certainly be willing to do so if it doesn't.

Atari is here to stay.

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Patience, grasshopper.

The initial sound in Kyoto exists as an initial sound in words like cute, and ditto for by in byoyomi (cf. beauty) so it probably the spelling that throws people, not the phonemes. AS to Tokyo, I can't readily think of other words with kio in them but there are words like audio and radio. However, there is the example of Ohio that could be followed, especially as its also a placename. But there are two other factors thta should militate towrds pronouncing Kyoto and Tokyo in similar fashion. ONe is that they are both place names often coupled together, and the other is that Kyoto has often been mentioned in news bulletins in connection with the Kyoto Protocol, and there it is almost always pronounved correctly.

We do have aword in 3nglish that begins with ts and I haven't heard anyone have trouble with it - tsunami, now common also as a metaphor. Going back further, I can't recall any English speaking chess players have trouble with Zugzwang but as that is spelt with a zed I can easily imagine some people using the zed for that reason.

It's true that English has borrowed very many words from other languages, but mots of that occurred centuries ago, and asking a new go player to take on board dozens of Japanese terms in one fell swoop with little context or use in wider contexts is a big ask.

Incidentally, Japanese is probably even more receptive to loan words than English. Major sources are chinese, Dutch, German and English, and english words are being added every day. JApanese newspapers have to publish thick tomes every year to explain all the new words they,ve used in the previous year, so they at least find coping with large volumes of new words a challenge.

My own experience is that, roughly, for every new player you attract because of exotic foreign terms, you lose one. For every player willing to take on the burden of new words you lose one who isn't. The upshot is that it doesn't really matter which approach you take to go terms - you end up with the same size population either way, just with different people.

Well for help in the future

As if you were reading English pronounce weiqi as way-chee. This will hopefully make it easier for the person to understand.

I suggest we all avoid these problems by switching to Esperanto.







Oh! Wait. That's based on Indo-European languages.


Back to the drawing board!

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I have unfortunately heard just about every phoneme in Zugzwang get mangled by English speakers: "z" instead of "tz", "u" as in "buck" rather than as in "book", "w" instead of "v", "a" as in "can" rather than as in "con". Perhaps the best solution is to follow Nigel Short's example and pronounce it "Volkswagen".

For some reason the one that bugs me the most is the pronunciation of "en prise" without the "s", which seems to be a specialty of British speakers.

As I’m a native speaker of German this made me spray my late night Ersatzkaffee all over my keyboard—through my nose

But the “a” in Tsook tswang is actually pronounced like the “u” in “buck”

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Japanese has a much higher chance of being pronounced correctly by the uninitiated than Chinese, as without tones every word without exception is automatically wrong.

And to make it even more understandable to Chinese listeners, pronouncing it as two questions with no pause in between fairly well mimics the correct tones: Way?Chee?

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Patience, grasshopper.

Huh! These are pronounced identically in the dialect I speak.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

But that is a PERFECT example. Yes, I imagine that English speakers NOW have much less trouble with an initial "ts" since decades ago "tsunami" became a word in English. "Tsunami" did not occur frequently if at all in English when I was younger. Used to be the deceptive term "tidal wave" <<properly that would have been what is known as a "bore", but those are rare in the sense that very few rivers get "bores" >>

So why think English can't "happily" take in, for example, the Japanese go terms. Why would it be harder for English to absorb those than "tsunami", "typhoon", "tycoon", etc. Yes, it would be a slower process, but that is just because only a small percentage of English speakers have any involvement with go.

Interesting! I wonder whether your pronunciation of these words sounds like "buck" or "book" to me. You are American, right? I googled for a couple of minutes and it seemed like merging these two sounds is more a UK thing.

Then there's pin/pen, marry/merry/Mary, etc...

I don't think anyone here is arguing about the ability of English speakers to absorb loan words per se.

The debate, it seems to me, is about three aspects:

1. The degree of the learning load. Dumping a big load of new Japanese terms on an unsuspecting reader was a strategy used in early Ishi Press books, and has been constantly and heavily criticised ever since. Market forces prevailed, and the style has changed. Similarly, if I were to present something to you along the lines of "seriai is an important aspect of semenogo and is one of the commonest features of the chubansen, but the thrill of the chase can be deceptive - the result is often semekirenai", I have no doubt that you could eventually learn all these doubts, but somehow I don't think I'd be doing you or our European friends any favours.

My impression is that for most established players the problem has already been solved in the form of a compromise list along the lines presented by uberdude. There may be debate about inclusion or omission of some terms, but this is small scale.

How many of those words you retain for beginners is a separate question. I rarely teach beginners so it's not something I have a strong view on.

2. Whether the terms are used correctly. I tend to harp on this topic but I recognise others find it a sideshow (their loss, I feel, but ...). Absorbing loan words with a meaning different from that in the original language is rather common, but the debate in go has to be whether this matters or not. E.g. does it matter that many English speakers think a yose-ko has something to do with the endgame?

3. Use of terms for showing off rather than communicating technical information - e.g. goban, kifu, moku. Different people have different lists and it seems that most people deprecate the practice - the debate is to what degree it matters. Does it make the game more or less palatable to newcomers?

There are other possible aspects, but some of them I regard as red herrings. For example, the alleged benefit of using Japanese as a lingua franca among westerners. In practice I can't see any significant benefit. If a Turkish guy uses shicho instead of the Turkish word for ladder, how does that help me? I need to know what he is saying about the ladder. But if I know enough Turkish to know that, then presumably I would also know the Turkish word for ladder.

Lingua francas are fascinating things. We would all readily think of the example of Latin, or French in diplomacy, and pidgin comes to mind. but in most cultures the written language of a nation is also often a form of lingua franca uniting people who speak often disparate dialects. What all these forms have in common, however, is that the lingua franca is learnt as a complete second language. It is not a mish-mash of a few foreign terms - a vocabulary list with no grammar, which is the idea often touted for go.

Well, I am American now but I was born and raised with a Yorkshire accent and only came to the US 40 years ago.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Stumbled over this a few minutes ago and had to think of this thread …

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I thought of late American columnist Mike Royko and the prix fixe dinner.

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Conversational Chinese isn't very difficult. Plus just because of the intonation of words doesn't mean that people don't mispronounce the Japanese terms. Since you are speaking in the context of go even if your intonation isn't perfect what you say should still be understood.