John Faibairn wrote:
We are really talking about four eastern languages here. Modern Chinese go borrowed heavily from Japanese, and in the process they have neglected much of the terminology used in classical Chinese go. The terms used in old Chinese go are nowhere defined, and some must have different nuances anyway because of group tax. When working on my Museum of Go Theory project, I therefore compiled a corpus (ongoing) of the vocabulary in commentaries. The purpose was not so much to see which terms were commonest, although that is illuminating, but to see what contexts (i.e. with which other words) each term was used, so that I could deduce the various nuances.
Before going on to talk about these nuances, I'll just throw in some raw meat into the cages of the numbers guys
By far the commonest technical word in old Chinese commentaries is 'jin' which I render as 'applying pressure'. This currently has 511 entries. The term 'bi' (gentle pressure) has 108 entries. Extreme pressure, as in forcing moves, shows up 255 times via either 'zhi' or 'luode'. Various moves come under a nexus of surrounding moves (as in Huang Longshi's Five Sieges), and as an example we may mention 'zhao' with 52 mentions. Other examples would include feng (sealing in) and capping.
Compared with all these diverse terms, attack ('gong') comes up with a measly 179 mentions.
We can see a similar pattern with what I called encroachment ('qin'). This has 178 mentions in that form, but various types of encroachment such as peeps and reductions and pitch-ins which have their own terms have to be added to that. Actual invasions? 91. Go figure
Word abundance are the kind of numbers you can deal with! This emperical evidence is rather convincing! The complete lack of the use of the term invasion is hilarious!
Before going on to talk about these nuances, I'll just throw in some raw meat into the cages of the numbers guys
By far the commonest technical word in old Chinese commentaries is 'jin' which I render as 'applying pressure'. This currently has 511 entries. The term 'bi' (gentle pressure) has 108 entries. Extreme pressure, as in forcing moves, shows up 255 times via either 'zhi' or 'luode'. Various moves come under a nexus of surrounding moves (as in Huang Longshi's Five Sieges), and as an example we may mention 'zhao' with 52 mentions. Other examples would include feng (sealing in) and capping.
Compared with all these diverse terms, attack ('gong') comes up with a measly 179 mentions.
We can see a similar pattern with what I called encroachment ('qin'). This has 178 mentions in that form, but various types of encroachment such as peeps and reductions and pitch-ins which have their own terms have to be added to that. Actual invasions? 91. Go figure