Sooo, I went over to SL to see the Japanese and Chinese words for 'liberty', in the sense that a stone has 4 liberties (empty adjacent intersections) - and was greeted by a disgruntled contributors arguing over the content and formatting of the liberty page, lol. Gotta love strong personalities clashing over matters of wiki...

So 'dame' is neutral point, but also liberty? How so?

And my real question is: can anyone confirm for me that 气 'qi' is the original chinese for 'liberty', even in ancient chinese texts? Has is always been that? Just looking to know the first (before the introduction of go into Japan) term for 'liberty'.

Assuming it is 气, does this basically mean 'life force' - the stone is on the board = metaphor for 'life'. (not of course in the go sense of living with 'two eyes', but simply in the sense of life = it exists (yet mortal).

Thanks and happy Monday Play some go.

Happy Monday.It is what is currently used in Go in Chinese, but I don't know its etymology.
Of course, the above written form is the simplified version,
not the tradition version 氣 still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, etc.I like to think of it in this case as "breath," as in each breath we take: when we are down to our very last breath, we are very close to death. And when we are completely out of breath, we die.

For example, "shortage of liberties" in Chinese is 氣緊,
which to me brings up an image like "the throat being constricted,"
or "there is an urgency (big trouble) with the breathing,"
"having difficulty with the breathing," or getting strangled, etc.

The Japanese kanji are 駄目 but the word is usually written in kana in go books. The everyday meaning is "useless, no good". In go it means an intersection on the board which does not count as a point for whichever color plays there. It also refers to a point on the board next to an occupied point. Points which are not territory points or points involved in sekis but are next to occupied points are usually worthless for both players. So the technical go meaning is fairly close to the everyday meaning. Of course "worthless" has to be interpreted in the context of Japanese rules.

Hi gowan, is this dame and is it usually written in hiragana or katakana in Go books ?
How do they describe "shortage of liberties" in Japanese ?

Just curious, thanks.

"dame" is usually written in katakana as ダメ.
There are two meanings, "worthless point", and "point next to a stone".

"shortage of liberties" is ダメ づまり = "dame" "zumari". The latter part, written in hiragana, is taken from a small dictionary of go terms. You may encounter this also written in katakana, or even in Kanji (derived from 詰まる = "tsumaru" = "be blocked").
As gowan already pointed out, is is very unusual to have "dame" written in Kanji.

However, as far as I experienced in Japanese Go books, "liberties" (when related to a Semeai = struggle for life or death) are counted in units of 手 = "te" = "hand" / "move", not in units of "dame", and so do not include "visible" liberties only.

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气 is a very versatile character that holds several meanings depending on the situation making it difficult to explain to people who don't speak Chinese. 气 in this instance means exactly as the translation states, breath.

What do you mean by "the translation" ? Which translation are you referring to ?

Yes, it is dame. As Cassandra's post points out it is usually written in katakana because it is a technical go term. In colloquial Japanese dame is used frequently, to mean "useless" or "no good". For example, if your pen has run out of ink, or you put money into a vending machine and didn't get anything out of it, you would use dame to describe the pen or machine.

Shortage of liberties is damezumari. The zumari part comes from tsumaru (the ts is vocalized) which has the same root as tsume in tsumego and refers to the situation where the liberties (dame) of a group are (mostly) filled.

The Japanese 1989 rules define 駄目 (dame) as an empty point at the end of the game that is not an eye point. They do not use it to define capture.

OC, go players also use it to mean an empty point that is adjacent to a stone or group of stones. As has been pointed out, they also talk about moves to capture (手), which is a second meaning of the English go term, liberty.



In this local fight to the death, each side has the same number of liberties, so that whoever plays first wins. But, OC, they do not have the same number of adjacent empty points.



I doubt it, but who knows? tchan? John Fairbairn?

IIUC, as a go term, 气 has the same ambiguity as the English term, liberty.



气, like the Sanskrit, prajna, has many meanings, mundane and mystical. Perhaps the basic meaning is air. The English versions of the Ing rules use the term, breath, which sounds a little funny in English.

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I've seen counts of dame (dame) and number of moves (te) required to take a group before used somewhat interchangeably when discussing a position. Dame is just the number of open spaces so it's closest to the English term liberty whereas (手) te is used to describe number of moves required to capture which is usually the more interesting question in a capturing race.

I have also seen the word 活路 (かつろ; katsuro) used to mean liberty/liberties in Japanese.
The individual kanji mean something like "living" and "line". The usual meaning of the word, as found in dictionaries, is "means of escape".
I think that 活路 as a word to describe liberty/liberties is used primarily (exclusively?) in introductory texts. When the word is used in game commentaries it always seems to have the standard meaning, e.g. "he spent ten minutes looking for a way to escape".