To clarify (I hope): yes, as Bill infers, I have mainly been pointing up a difference in US/UK usage. It seems to me that Americans use the word "grade" rather more than we do and associate it with a certain ordering simply because it is part of their daily school life. We have no such constant contact with the word or specific association with a number order (or if we do, it may well be the reverse order).

The reason I pointed it out was that I got the impression that Bill was recommending the use of the word "grade" for "dan" and "class" for "kyu". While I wouldn't specially object to that if it became universal, it seemed to me that the logic of the argument was flawed in several ways. One was that it was US-centric, and everyone here knows how I feel about that! Another (which I didn't bother to mention but will now) is that the step analogy is useful but is not limited to dan. As Honinbo Shuho remarked, the purpose of either dan or kyu was to provide steps to indicate the size of handicaps. These steps apply with equal force to dan and kyu. The reason the system was split like that was historical. While the only players that mattered were pros, dan was usually sufficient. When amateurs came along in large numbers, instead of replacing dans altogether, which would have undermined a lot of history, a decision was made to add kyus - but still with the same step idea. A westerm mathematician might want to use negative dan numbers, and a western computer programmer might want to start an array at zero with long integers for especially weak players - but Shuho was neither. I think we are in synch with him even today as we happily refer to dan grades and kyu grades, i.e. grade is not tied to dan but more to "one-stone handicap difference". I don't even think there is a prior art of translation bias towards grade for dan. A common translation for "dan" in older go texts, but above all in martial arts, is "degree". I've never been sure whether this was meant to hint at a degree in the university sense, but the nuance that "dan" is when you qualified as a pro would not have gone amiss in Shuho's day.

I have never tried to trace when and why amateur dan grades split off from pro dan grades, though it was clearly before about 1950. At a guess, it may have come about when amateur tournaments began (mid 1930s), and the results exposed the fact that all those 1-dans who had effectively bought their grades by buying diplomas in fact covered rather a wide range. Rather than demote the less successful, the winners of the tournaments were promoted. We see this process very clearly from the 1950s when, in turn the first 5-dan, 6-dan, 7-dan and 8-dan were made specific prizes in amateur events.

I am not proposing any new usage BTW. I think the words dan and kyu are best left alone. In general I favour English words in go, but mainly when that promotes understanding of concepts or if it disembowels affectation. Dan and kyu present no such problems.

I was interested to find out about the English usage of grade 1, grade 2, etc.



In that we are in total agreement.

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At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
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I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but I'm going to give responses for some sort of closure.



Yes I do. Even to non go players, anyone that's studied Japanese for maybe a month has at least seen 段 in a word like 階段, for example. Even if you don't study Japanese at all, and just pick up a travel guide, you'll find phrases like:

こんにちは。
階段はどこですか。
お手洗いはどこですか。

I'd say that 段 ranks up there with characters like 学　and 花 in terms of difficulty.

But it doesn't really matter to me if you intended to "teach" us some Japanese as much as it seems that you are trying to use this as a means to argue from a higher authority (eg. "What John and I know, but you guys don't, is that..."), when really, 段 is a basic kanji that most everyone that has any interest in the language knows.



Do I? Have any explanation? Given only the quoted paragraph - which is what I was responding to in the first place - what other interpretation am I to adopt?

The first sentence of the paragraph stands on its own - you argue that grade for kyu is not right for go usage. But what are the subsequent sentences intended to portray if not a distinction between grade and class based on order?

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be immersed

I did not know that's a meaning of dan. There's a lot of us who don't speak any of the relevant go languages (viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2833&hilit=language).

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Occupy Babel!

It could be that some people do not know the meaning of dan - I was mainly turned off that that was being used as an argument, when the point of the matter had nothing to do with "step", since the quote that I was responding to specifically pointed out the ordering of "grades" and "classes".

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be immersed

I am surprised that you disagree. Let's recap what went before:







What you say not does not contradict the fact that a lot of people do not know that step is one meaning of dan in Japanese.



I fail to see your point about arguing from higher authority when it is something that John and I, who are the debaters, in your view, both know and agree about. Our difference was not about Japanese, but about the usage of grade in English, which is different on different sides of the Atlantic, something that I said in my note that you quote, and that John clarified.



It does seem to me that you are beating a dead horse.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Well, again, it seems that you are avoiding the primary issue that brought about my involvement in this discussion. Conveniently, this is the part that was not addressed in your reply:



It's true that I may have gotten annoyed with your bringing up the "step" discussion, which I thought was irrelevant - and I still think it is in the context of the quote which I originally pointed out. But it's still true that your original quote indicates that a sense of order was suggested, when it is arbitrary:



The only reason I really pursued the whole argument about how dan is a simple kanji is because it appeared to me that this was being used as an argument, when it did not seem to have anything to do with the part that I originally quoted.

---

My involvement in this discussion can be appeased if you can explain to me how the following quote:



does not suggest a contrast between "grade" and "class" by distinguishing by order. And if John does not say that this is what he thought was irrelevant, then it is something that I believe, myself, to be irrelevant, because no such ordering distinction exists for "kyu", as "kyu" can be used both with low numbers being of high quality, or with high numbers being of high quality.

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be immersed

Here's another statement where I think Bill and I can claim to be in complete agreement: "Sheesh!"



Kirby: I do hope I'm wrong (perhaps forlornly since I have no idea what you are really disputing) but what is coming over to me is that you have completely missed Bill's point that grade is from Latin gradus. This means a "step" (though not necessarily a "dan" because it can mean step as in "pace" as well as a step up a staircase). I took his reference to Japanese dan not as hotdogging about Japanese but as a gentle reminder to some to consider the Latin, i.e. focus on regular steps. Dan = step is a perfectly good argument in general. I just happen to think that it's undermined here by different UK/US usages and associations for "grade". I got the impression that Bill now acknowledges that (thank you, Bill - world peace saved for another week!). Also, no-one seems to have disputed that Shuho had in mind gradings as steps on the handicap scale, and steps are obviously 100% relevant there. So there's no palpable disagreement - except yours.

Or is it simply a case of "De equis mortuis nil nisi trollum"?

I will try to be more clear. My dispute is in the idea that the following quote:



Does not imply a distinction between "grade" and "class", based on order - because I think that such a distinction is arbitrary when you are talking about "kyu".

To me, I cannot see how this quote does not attempt to portray the idea that "grade" and "class" can be distinguished based on order. In addition to this, I also believe that such a distinction between "grade" and "class" based on order should not be compared to "kyu" vs. "dan", because the topic at hand - kyu - can have either "high quality" being associated either with large numbers or small numbers, so distinguishing "kyu" and "dan" this way, to me, seems arbitrary.

The discussion about the meaning of "段" is interesting, but it is a bit sidetracked from what I was originally trying to point out: the numerical value of "kyu" is arbitrary, because either numbers great in value or otherwise can be used to represent strong or high quality.

Again, the quote:


to me, seems to disagree with this. That's because, to me, the quote above paints a picture of distinguishing between class and grade based on what is "higher". But when you are talking about "kyu", such talk of what is "higher" is arbitrary, because either "big numbers" or "small numbers" can represent something of high quality.

Is this not clear?

Again, the talk about "dan" and "step" and "gradus" is separate from the quote that I am referencing. The discussion about "dan" and "step" is all well and good.

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be immersed

Yes, John, my original remark was made in ignorance of British usage. Given the ambiguity, I now think that grade is not good for distinguishing kyu from dan.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

What is not clear?

_________________
be immersed

i won't pretend i really understand your point, but it seems to me that you don't like Bill's post suggesting that kyu ~ class because (n-1)-th class is better than n-th class and the same applies to kyus. and you seem to argue against it because kyus can be ordered either way in your opinion.

if i am correct about this, then this looks like a much ado about nothing to me. and i am also not sure if i agree with kyus being ordered either way, from high to low or from low to high. while i know nothing about etymology and original meaning of the word, from actual usage i saw (being a westerner with experience with go and limited knowledge of martial arts), i would say that 'lower numbered' kyu is always better than 'higher numbered' one and i would be more positive of that statement than of similar ones about classes or grades (not being a native English speaker). maybe there is another usage of 'kyu' i am not aware of and that works the other way, then you are right and i am wrong but i don't know about such.

you can still say that this distinction is arbitrary and that you could use 'kyu' with 'highest number' being the best, but why would you do that if everyone else use it the other way?

once again, if i am off with this post, i am sorry and everyone please feel free to ignore it, i am just trying to figure out what's going on

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I might be wrong, but probably not.

Yes.



"Kyu" can be used when "higher numbered" is better than "lower numbered". This is the entire point.




Not everyone uses it this way. In the game of go, this is how it is often used these days, but a "higher numbered kyu" can also be used to denote high quality.

There are a number of examples of this, and even one in this discussion (which, incidentally, was one that I had not known before this talk):


So yes, in go these days, for example if you are on a go server, a lower kyu number means a "stronger" kyu. But this is not something inherent about the word, "kyu".

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be immersed

I think you need to stand back a little and look at the forest, not the trees.

This is go we are talking about. We are further talking about a scale for players at the weaker end of the spectrum. The extreme beginners' end is very, very fuzzy and we don't really know where to stop adding numbers that are meaningful. That virtually dictates that kyu numbering starts with 1 below 1-dan and goes down into, not exactly infinity, but into fuzzinity. This approach may not be inherent in the word kyu, but it's certainly inherent in kyu as applied to this aspect of go.

Sure. That may be rationale for why we typically use this type of numbering system in go. But the title of this thread is "What does 'kyu' mean?", and it seems misleading to try to force this approach into the definition of "kyu".

It might be like saying that all stones are either black or white. Maybe this is something that would fly if we were talking only about modern go (well, maybe not on April 1st on KGS), but it's not a true statement in itself. There are grey stones, for example.

When we try to define "kyu" in English, even when it's applied to go, I don't think we should try to enforce scenario-specific connotations on the word. I would prefer that we have a precise equivalent, and then enforce the scenario-specific connotations on the equivalent that we select.

And, in fact, this is what I (I guess mistakenly) assumed that you were disagreeing with Bill about when you first posted in this thread, mentioning the word, "arbitrary":

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be immersed

such a "simple" word has so many different interpretations/meanings
which led to this heated discussioni

As you can see Chinese/Japanese/Korean all are deep languages, 1 word with gazillion meanings

Usually to identify the meanings of words in Chinese/Japanese/Korean, words are usually not alone by themselves but used with another word or two or more.
When they are just a single word by themselves, discussions of their meanings can be endless.
It's because there are so many idioms/expressions/phrases that uses the same word but all can have one or more meanings.

Even English in a way is similar to that. We can often guess the meaning of tough vocabulary words through the context of a sentence, this is the same exact case in Chinese/Japanese/Korean.

Just to throw in my 2 cents...

I don't think Bill's intent was to argue from higher authority, I think what he was trying to do was clear up the fact that there were some subtle and nuanced details that were easily overlooked to those unfamiliar with the two very specific people who were debating.

For instance --



...carries a different feel when you consider...



..likewise...



...makes more sense when you consider...




I personally found Bill's clarifications quite useful, and they certainly paint the discussion between the two of them in a different light. They both knew and agreed on the linguistic/historical backgrounds of the Japanese/Latin words, they were just trying to clarify cultural differences in how the English equivalents were perceived. Personally I feel I'd be more inclined to think that a "second grade" is higher than a "first grade" and a "second class" is lower than a "first class" but as has been established that could be because I'm American...Maybe in the end it would be easier if we compromise and go with the Aussie way of labeling and just call them all "Bruce" (=

My interpretation of:


was, again, that the ordering methodology that we use for numbering the "kyu" system is just based on Japanese practice for naming ranks in go.

The discussion about "dan" being "step", etc. appeared to come in response to my comment on the numerical ordering of kyu ranks. Reading the post, again, I still feel that my interpretation of what had been said is rational. Of course, it's possible that John meant something different in what he wrote.

When Bill started explaining what "dan" meant to me, I felt a little bit insulted. This could have gotten me to be a little bit off-track in the discussion, when the real thing that I wanted to point out, was just that the ordering was arbitrary - even though we happen to use this ordering/rank system in modern go.

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be immersed

I (would like to learn enough to be able to) consider myself an armchair linguist, and I'm always interested in the etymology of words, so I didn't feel at all offended by the discussion of gradus and ji.

I used to take Aikido, so I'm already familiar with the kyu/dan ranking system. I don't personally see anything wrong with extending the same ranks used in Japanese martial arts into Go (especially as it's been done since near a century ago, at least) - although I'd be interested to know if Chinese martial arts also use a ji/duan distinction, and I wonder the same about Korean martial arts.