Life In 19x19

Reasonable answer: He tenuki'd. He played a tenuki.

Both work because this is English. If you loan a word into another language, does it retain all of its original properties? No.

Thanks all for your opinions and your humor.

I love that everybody has resisted the urge to talk about the Japanese verb that the noun comes from.

Well played, L19

joellercoaster wrote:[..] the Japanese verb that the noun comes from.

Care to enlighten us, please?

TIA, Tom

Reasonable answer: He tenuki'd. He played a tenuki.

Both work because this is English

The first one doesn't work because it's apostrophe abuse. In the rare case of a verb ending in -i, ski being one of the few I can think of, you're still going to add -ed to get the past tense.

Then again, I know somebody on another board who consistently uses get's, which enrages me no end.

Fedya wrote:Then again, I know somebody on another board who consistently uses get's, which enrages me no end.

They're their, Fedya. Calm down. Maybe it is an abbreviation for Get Us Enraged.

Fedya wrote:somebody on another board who consistently uses get's, which enrages me no end.

Fedya, wow, that's a new one. Never seen this variation before. He has to actively insert the wrong apostrophe!

Catapostrophically OT


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Aargh, now my eyes are bleeding, my brain hurts, and I must probably kill myself because I wrote that last hidden sentence.

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Yet there has been a huge inflation of apostrophes in Germany in the past ~20 years, so much that typographers have invented the term “Deppenapostroph” (something like “Idiot’s Apostrophe”).

Blame it on the neue Rechtschreibung. /sarcasm

Some people even write “nicht’s” which is complete nonsense because the word is “nichts” (nothing),

Everybody knows the proper spelling is nix.

Bonobo wrote:Care to enlighten us, please?

"Tenuki" means literally something like "removal of the hand". The verb is this one:

抜く (nuku) - to withdraw or omit

Which raises the question - how does one conjugate Japanese verbs in English? "I tenuku" sounds dodgy, and "I tenuku'ed" is wrong in both languages ("I tenukimashita"? Nope nope nope). Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure that Japanese people would say "tenuku" - I have never played Go with a Japanese speaker. "Te o nuku"?

Maybe we just shouldn't.

I think re-verbing in English the nouned Japanese verb (nuku -> nuki) is probably the best we can do, and matches how we talk about nobi, tobi and so on.

"Tenuki" means literally something like "removal of the hand". The verb is this one:

抜く (nuku) - to withdraw or omit

Which raises the question - how does one conjugate Japanese verbs in English? "I tenuku" sounds dodgy, and "I tenuku'ed" is wrong in both languages ("I tenukimashita"? Nope nope nope). Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure that Japanese people would say "tenuku" - I have never played Go with a Japanese speaker. "Te o nuku"?

1. Tenuki does not have a literal meaning any more. It now means 'omission'. Its derivation is obviously 'te wo nuku' but te in that phrase means 'care' or 'trouble' or 'work' and the phrase means to skimp on one's work.

2. Because the go meaning is rather different, te meaning 'move' and the whole phrase meaning to 'play elsewhere' or just 'omit', go players have made their own verb tenuki suru (as in　黒３を手抜きして他の好転点にまわる. It is also one of those suru verbs like benkyou that can be split with wo, as in 手抜きをした定石.

3. Although tenuki can be regarded as a word, the grammar of the common phrase 三手抜き is of linguistic interest. Probably best here to assume 三　is being used adverbially (= 'three times').

Since Japanese go players regard tenuki as a very go-specific technical word, it seems to fall into the same category of words as hane and atari, and so probably merits adoption in English. However, it is rare that it cannot be rendered perfectly well with some phrase such as 'play elsewhere' (three syllables, same as tenuki, please note), and that is generally what I do.

I have discussed atari with John Power. He prefers ataries; I prefer ataris. But I have to admit that atarid I find unacceptable, and would prefer ataried, though it makes me hiccup when reading it (though not when hearing it).

PS I notice that when writing atari this forum very naughtily changes it to Atari without my permission. I've been caught out more than few times with such changes. How can we turn the robot off?

John Fairbairn wrote:PS I notice that when writing atari this forum very naughtily changes it to Atari without my permission. I've been caught out more than few times with such changes. How can we turn the robot off?

The forum doesn't change atari to Atari, but I suspect your device or browser's autocorrect feature is the culprit. What do you use?

John Fairbairn wrote:

"Tenuki" means literally something like "removal of the hand". The verb is this one:

抜く (nuku) - to withdraw or omit

Which raises the question - how does one conjugate Japanese verbs in English? "I tenuku" sounds dodgy, and "I tenuku'ed" is wrong in both languages ("I tenukimashita"? Nope nope nope). Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure that Japanese people would say "tenuku" - I have never played Go with a Japanese speaker. "Te o nuku"?

1. Tenuki does not have a literal meaning any more. It now means 'omission'. Its derivation is obviously 'te wo nuku' but te in that phrase means 'care' or 'trouble' or 'work' and the phrase means to skimp on one's work.

2. Because the go meaning is rather different, te meaning 'move' and the whole phrase meaning to 'play elsewhere' or just 'omit', go players have made their own verb tenuki suru (as in　黒３を手抜きして他の好転点にまわる. It is also one of those suru verbs like benkyou that can be split with wo, as in 手抜きをした定石.

3. Although tenuki can be regarded as a word, the grammar of the common phrase 三手抜き is of linguistic interest. Probably best here to assume 三　is being used adverbially (= 'three times').

Since Japanese go players regard tenuki as a very go-specific technical word, it seems to fall into the same category of words as hane and atari, and so probably merits adoption in English. However, it is rare that it cannot be rendered perfectly well with some phrase such as 'play elsewhere' (three syllables, same as tenuki, please note), and that is generally what I do.

I have discussed atari with John Power. He prefers ataries; I prefer ataris. But I have to admit that atarid I find unacceptable, and would prefer ataried, though it makes me hiccup when reading it (though not when hearing it).

PS I notice that when writing atari this forum very naughtily changes it to Atari without my permission. I've been caught out more than few times with such changes. How can we turn the robot off?

In determining the forms of atari (or tenuki) taking them as English words, maybe we could use the word taxi as a model. For example the airplane taxied to the take-off runway.

The forum doesn't change atari to Atari, but I suspect your device or browser's autocorrect feature is the culprit. What do you use?

Explorer on Windows (which is what I used this morning for atari). I also use a Mac. Can't remember if I have had the problem there, but generally Apple seems more intent on nannying than Windows, so I expect it has happened.

John Fairbairn wrote:go players have made their own verb tenuki suru (as in　黒３を手抜きして他の好転点にまわる

Aha! That's cool. Thanks for the explanation... my Japanese is rusty in the extreme and comes from a time in my life long before Go.

In that case "I tenuki" sounds fine. Past tense "I tenukied" is more tenuous (though probably as good as anything). I almost want to say "I made (did?) a tenuki".