Life In 19x19

The more I think about this topic, the more it interests me.

One observation that I just had was that, even if a word has pretty much the same meaning in different languages, sometimes hearing it makes me have a different feeling.

An example that comes to mind is ramen (a Japanese word) vs. ramyun (a Korean word). Surely both words can be used to describe the same dish, but when I think of the word ramen, I am reminded of Japanese brand/style noodles, whereas when I think of ramyun, I think of Korean brands.

I suppose that the two might be differentiated in Japanese or Korean (eg. 韓国ラーメン ("Korean ramen/ramyun") - to specify Korean style ramen in Japanese, or maybe 일본 라면 ("Japanese ramen/ramyun") - in Korean), but when I think of simply the word "ramen", I typically think of "Japanese style ramen", whereas when I think of the word "ramyun", I think of Korean style ramen.

I wonder if the use of a word like "goban" makes one think a bit of Japanese culture while talking about the object...

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On the other hand, a word like "sushi" is so common in English, that I think both of Korean chobab and Japanese sushi when I use the term. Interesting...

Maybe that's what's different between a word like "wasabi" and a word like "goban". Wasabi is so common that it's become a part of the English language. Maybe it was easier to say "wasabi" than "Japanese horseradish", so it caught on?

Maybe it's easier to say "ramen" than to make up an English equivalent?

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I guess I'm just talking to myself right now, but maybe word preference has to do with the order in which we discover something.

If I know the word for rice already, and I hear someone saying, "gohan", I might wonder, "Why not just use the English word for 'rice'?".

I think that I learned the word "wasabi", on the other hand, before ever hearing the term, "Japanese horseradish", so "wasabi" seems more natural to me. If, on the other hand, I had heard of "Japanese horseradish" all my life, and someone just now introduced the word "wasabi" into the English venacular, I might find it a bit odd thinking, "Why not use the term, 'Japanese horseradish'?".

I guess in the case of go boards... If you know something about the game of go already, and you are introduced to the board on which the game is played... Then it seems natural to call this object a "go board". You know what "go" is - and this is the board on which the game is played.

But if you knew nothing about the game at all, and were introduced to this rectangular object with lines on it... Then if some Japanese speaker introduced the name of this weird object to you, calling this object a "goban"... Then, I suppose it'd be natural to associate this object with the word "goban".

So I guess if we think of "go" and its accessories as unique entities, not relating them to anything else we are familiar with, then "goban" seems natural to me.

But if, on the other hand, we think of "go" as a "board" game, just like chess, othello, Monopoly, and the like... Then, it seems natural to consider the board on which this game is played to be called a "go board".

If I had introduced my son to sashimi as "raw chunks of dead fish," I would have saved a lot of money.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Special-Deer-Skin-G ... 309wt_1139

This would be a go board I would prefer not to call a goban.

I tend to think of this as goban.

Kirby wrote:But if, on the other hand, we think of "go" as a "board" game, just like chess, othello, Monopoly, and the like... Then, it seems natural to consider the board on which this game is played to be called a "go board".

Not really - see my post above. A chessboard is not called a "chess board". And "goboard" is just a really ugly word I'd rather avoid.

palapiku wrote:

Kirby wrote:But if, on the other hand, we think of "go" as a "board" game, just like chess, othello, Monopoly, and the like... Then, it seems natural to consider the board on which this game is played to be called a "go board".

Not really - see my post above. A chessboard is not called a "chess board". And "goboard" is just a really ugly word I'd rather avoid.

I think that it's still okay to call a "chessboard" a "chess board", because it is a board game, and the "chessboard"/"chess board" is the board on which the game is played. For example, the wikipedia page for chessboard seems to use "chessboard" and "chess board" interchangeably. Some other board games don't have a special word for the board. For example, "Monopoly" has no "Monopolyboard", but it is the "Monopoly board".

So I'm not sure if my mind is changed on the part that you quoted.

But to your point, games sometimes adopt names for their components - some games call the pieces "pawns" (I'm talking about games that have only one type of piece, for example), or maybe "tokens". It might be perfectly fine to use the word "piece" to denote the name of what is being referred to here.

So I suppose "goban" could be used in the same way to denote a particular component of the game, like you suggest. Although, if you still consider go to be a board game, then I'd say that it'd probably still be acceptable for somebody to call the "goban" a "go board".

Maybe both are OK.

Kirby wrote:I think that it's still okay to call a "chessboard" a "chess board", because it is a board game, and the "chessboard"/"chess board" is the board on which the game is played.

Yes, it's still okay, because a chessboard is literally a chess board. Nevertheless, a special word for the chessboard exists. It even has its own wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chessboard
If chess deserves a unique word for its board, why not go?

palapiku wrote:

Kirby wrote:I think that it's still okay to call a "chessboard" a "chess board", because it is a board game, and the "chessboard"/"chess board" is the board on which the game is played.

Yes, it's still okay, because a chessboard is literally a chess board. Nevertheless, a special word for the chessboard exists. It even has its own wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chessboard
If chess deserves a unique word for its board, why not go?

Sure. I guess I agree with you there. I don't know if it's necessary or not, but I don't see a problem with it. Then again, I've never met anyone that's been turned off to go because of its jargon.

a special word for the chessboard exists.

This is a very weak argument because it probably simply reflects the American tendency to run words together. Brits and others tend to avoid that, though may use a hyphen. Americans say checkerboard but we say draughts board.

In any case a Google search on "chessboard" gave me 2,040,000 hits. On "chess board" I got 2,120,000.

For "go board" I got 786,000. It was hard to get a figure for goban as this seems to have multiple other usages, but the nearest I could get (by using additional words such as board or game) came in generally at less than half that.

I kind of want to make a new name for go boards, now. Maybe I'll call a go board/goban the "plateau of combat".

"I sat down at the plateau of combat, holding a heulk ishi in mi mano."

John Fairbairn wrote:

a special word for the chessboard exists.

This is a very weak argument because it probably simply reflects the American tendency to run words together. Brits and others tend to avoid that, though may use a hyphen. Americans say checkerboard but we say draughts board.

In any case a Google search on "chessboard" gave me 2,040,000 hits. On "chess board" I got 2,120,000.

For "go board" I got 786,000. It was hard to get a figure for goban as this seems to have multiple other usages, but the nearest I could get (by using additional words such as board or game) came in generally at less than half that.

Google customizes its search results for the user, so the numbers tend to vary. However, When I search on goban I get ~1.4 million, and the first 2 pages of results were all for GO BOARDS. I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the 786k results you got for "go board" were for things other than gobans, so accepting one number and not the other seems silly.

In any case, citing the number of google hits is a weak argument for which word is appropriate for the surrounding game board.

Finally, what you call running words together we call forming compound words. I hear the Germans are fond of using them as well.

Language is about communication. Know your audience. For most beginners (who haven't read Hikaru no Go), the use of Japanese terms doesn't communicate very well, if at all. I also find it very off-putting.

However, I think Tryphon makes the best argument so far for continuing to use Japanese terms. It cuts across languages and is common to a majority in the go playing community (at least until we meet someone from China or Korea).

I was surprised the first time I heard a lesson from Guo Juan. I had to force myself to learn a few new Japanese terms just to understand what she was saying. Even now, I still have to think twice when she says 'nobi' which seems to be one of her favorite terms.

But she's Chinese. Why doesn't she use Chinese terms? Surely there are acceptable Chinese terms that she could use. She knows her audience. Most Western go players have learned the game, and the terminology, from the Japanese. (but I still think her use of Japanese terms are mostly unnecessary, and perhaps a bit overkill)

And then I was equally surprised when Korean pros started making a bigger push to also spread go to the west, coming to Go Congresses. They only used Korean terms.

It was hilarious, and a little sad, to watch the total lack of communication between Western students and Korean teachers. The blank stares between them as they tried to figure out what they were each saying. We just couldn't understand why these Korean teachers didn't know these terms. After all, these were common 'Go terms', were they not? And they are professional Go players, aren't they?

They wouldn't even call it 'Go', they called it 'Baduk'.

Gah, now I have to learn terminology from two different languages. And I already have enough trouble mastering my own.

Now I have to buy a Baduk Goban.

imabuddha wrote:Finally, what you call running words together we call forming compound words. I hear the Germans are fond of using them as well.

Yes - who would not like compound-words? We do like them in Finland.

Btw. as someone mentioned, as "go" is a verb, and it is also customary to use nouns as verbs, do you use the verb "to go" with the meaning of "to play the game of go"? If not, then why not?

kex wrote:Yes - who would not like compound-words? We do like them in Finland.

Indeed. My personal favourite is "mustaviinimarjamehupullokoripino" (correct translation to English requires about nine words)

This thread is clearly no longer about goban prices, so I will feel free to weigh in on the language question.

1. Activities that are deviant in the sense of "not customary" attract people who are deviant in the sense of "weirdo". Most of us here adore go, think it is the most extraordinary game ever, and wonder why it isn't more popular, at home and abroad. Well, look in the mirror. This forum alone contains enough ridiculous arguments about rules/variant rules/go variants to make most people cringe. Then, in another corner, we have the people who want to apply techniques from particle physics to the interpretation of go. Further, we have antiquarians who can turn any question about go into a history lecture which begins "I thought everyone knew..." The people who fetishize Japanese language and aesthetics are, in the grand scheme of things, fairly benign.

This isn't meant as a critique of our weirdos. I love you guys. But if you're worried about deviant go-players scaring away potential newcomers, politely asking the deviants to be a little less deviant completely misrecognizes the problem. Go attracts deviants because it is, itself, a somewhat deviant activity. If you want go to become more mainstream, the challenge is to work around this structural disadvantage - to get people to start playing in spite of the weirdos. You can't wish the problem away by chanting "go board, go board, go board."

2. We could replace ban with board, aji with taste, tesuji with handy move, etc. But even after our grand anglicization of go jargon, it will still be... jargon. The main reason that newcomers have trouble with the concept of aji isn't that they're being turned off by the aesthetic preferences of weaboos; it's that it's a really, really hard concept to understand．Aji is jargon in Japanese too, after all. (I think somewhere Kageyama mentions seeing a newspaper article entitled "Preserving flavor: Stick to the fundamentals and you'll be in good shape!" About how to prepare chicken stock, of course.)

So if replacing Japanese jargon with English jargon won't make it any less jargon-y, is there anything to be said for keeping the original jargon? In a lot of cases, I think there is. The names of abstract concepts normally get their force from a tension between the literal root meaning of a word and the idiomatic sense the word acquires through use. When we translate go concepts, we can't just wish very hard that the new word we choose recreates that tension; we have to use between literal and idiomatic translation, and when we do that we lose the other half of the meaning.

3. That said, it seems there was a period when translators thought that every single aspect of the opening had to be transliterated rather than translated. Moku, schmoku. I don't see any reason why coordinates can't translate these just fine.