Shouldn't Go have English terminologies for US and EU?

[Uberdude]

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.

The [chinese] words might even be easier for people to pronounce than the Japanese.

My experience is that when speaking with Japanese people, "igo" is usually understood immediatly. With Korean people, "baduk" sometimes need two tries and (iirc) is better understood if you frankly pronounce "paduk". With Chinese people, "weiqi" needs many more tries with random intonations and I often had to describe the game for my Chinese interlocutor to understand.
Granted, I don't speak Chinese (neither Korean), but I think it is by far the most difficult to pronounce and get understood for most people. You seem to have the opposite opinion and I'd be interested to learn more.

I too share Jhyn's experience of having difficulty getting Chinese people to understand my attempt at saying weiqi, and to a lesser extent Koreans baduk/paduk, with Japanese the easiest.

[Fedya]

I would assume he pronounced it "fix", with the implication being Verb definition #6 for those who aren't native English speakers.

As for all the funny quote marks, I'd guess that since the column is originally from the late 1980s, the text of it wound up in an ASCII text file, which is what is reproduced on the archival web site.