I'm trying to learn go terms in Mandarin Chinese. The Sensei's Library page http://senseis.xmp.net/?ChineseGoTerms is very helpful for this goal, but there are some simple words that I cannot find there or elsewhere online. Could someone please help out?

I would like to know how to refer to:
1) a stone
2) a string (a strictly connected group of stones, usually small)
3) a group (a loosely connected group of stones)
4) a dragon (a very large string)

On the Sensei's page, I believe it tells how to say stone and dragon, but I would like to know if there are multiple terms for them. There is no word for string, and the only words similar to group are "live group", "dead group" and include more information than I want.

If you know a good reference for this information I would be happy to see it.

Thanks.

Do they actually refer to them as stones? Maybe they call them something like game pieces. My wife always has trouble translating that, I'm not sure why.

I believe they refer to individual stones as "qi2 zi". Most of the terms on Sensei's Library for group (live group, dead group) use the word "qi2" for the part meaning group. For example live group is "huo2 qi2" and dead group is "si3 qi2". But from the Chinese speakers I've asked, "qi2" is not used to refer to general groups the way I think of a "group". However, most of these people are not avid go players, so I'd really like to get some information from a native Chinese speaker who is also an avid go player.

Is your wife a native Chinese speaker and go player? If so, I'd very much appreciate if you asked her about these terms.

Qi is complicated because it has a lot of meanings - hao qi, for example, means a good move whereas gao qi means a strong player.

A stone is usually referred to as zi. A string can be described as chuan (串). One word for a group is kuai(块). A dragon is long (龙).

It's important to note that we don't usually distinguish between a string and a group in Chinese.

chowder420, what you and illluck said is correct.

Usually, when people talk about a small string (say, fewer than 10 stones),
they use zhe⁴ ji³ ge⁴ zi³ 這幾個子, "these (few) stones," or simply, zhe⁴ ji³ ge⁴ 這幾個, "these (few)."

Usually, when they refer to a huge group (not alive), they say da⁴ long² 大龍, "big dragon" --
if it's small, they don't usually use long² 龍; instead, they use kuai⁴ 塊.

Do we do it in English?

(Rules theorists excepted, natch).

It would be funny to refer to them as stones while saying they "eat"
them. I am interested in the Chinese terminology, but I don't have
any deeper knowledge of the language or Chinese script.
How about the number 2 in "qi2"? Is this just some character which
doesn't show up appropriately on my screen?

Cheers,
Rainer
(GoChild GoRo with 1665236 points)

No, your computer is displaying it correctly -- it is simply the digit "two".
In Mandarin (Putonghua), there are four tones, denoted by 1,2,3,4.
For example: ma by itself is ambiguous, but
ma¹: mother
ma²: hemp
ma³: horse
ma⁴: scold

( So putonghua is actually pu³ tong¹ hua⁴, and weiqi, Go, is actually wei² qi². )

Yea, it's a little funny.
They are not really being referred to as "stones"; rather, they are referred to as "Go pieces".

I don't know the etymology -- maybe John or others more knowledgeable can help --
I'm guessing the English usage "Go stone" came from the Japanese Go ishi 碁石 ?
Before that, I don't know if the use of ishi 石 for Go pieces came from the Japanese or the Chinese ?

The "zi" 子 is complicated, because it is amongst other things a general noun suffix. Examples are wife "Qīzi" or 妻子, son "Érzi" 儿子, chopsticks "Kuàizi" 筷子 though in general mostly Chinese words don't have suffixes.

I've never had anyone use 'strings' when talking about go. We've always just used groups.

You must not play against string theorists.

_________________
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Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

But I never understood why it's written "wei²qi²", when it is correctly pronounced: we²iqi². The same with pu³ to¹ng hu⁴a :o It may look more funny but at least you know how to pronounce which letter.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Please explain?

Seconded. Note that "ei" is actually one sound, same with "ong".

p.s. Edlee probably didn't want to add unnecessary complexity, but the actual situation is far more ambiguous - there are many characters with different meanings that are pronounced exactly the same (in fact, I'd say that the majority of Chinese characters are homophones). Also, there's also another tone (the neutral tone).

Hm, maybe there are different ways to teach chinese pronounciation but we started with Pinyin and there the tones were always assigned to specific letters. Weiqi e.g. is written wéiqí in Pinyin. The ´ show that these letters are pronounced using the second tone.
Putonghua is written: Pŭtōnghuà (I made a mistake with the tones in my post above). ˘ is the third tone, - is the first tone and ` is the fourth tone in Pinyin.

That way I used to think the tones should stand behind the letters which will be pronounced differently and not behind each syllable.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I only know very little about mandarin, but I was taught to understand the tone as assigned to the whole syllable, even though it was written above one letter (I learned with pinyin as well).

The way to think of it is that every Chinese syllable consists of a vowel sound (nb vowel sound, not vowel) and this may have some consonant sounds fore and aft.

The vowel sound can be a pure vowel or a vowel with a diphthong. In the latter case, the pinyin mark, if accents are used, goes over the main vowel, which may be the first (e.g. as in ei) or the second (as in ua), or the middle (as in uai). It may even go over a vowel sound not shown (to our ears), as in ui. But it's always the main vowel, and this is always predictable.

Where numbers are shown instead, the number is added at the end of the whole vowel sound and you just have to know which is the main vowel for pronunciation purposes.

Note that the tone mark shown does not necessarily represent the sound you will hear. Tones mutate according to the environment, usually in a regular, learnable way. Occasionally actual pronunciations are shown with tone marks, but the norm is to show what might be called the standard dictionary form for each syllable, the one regular exception being the neutral tone, which is often so marked, either with 0 or 5, or just by absence of any tone mark, but dictionaries vary here.

The tones are officially assigned to the syllable's nucleus. When using diacritics to mark tone it is tradition to put them on top of the vowel symbolizing the nucleus. Whereas when you mark them with numbers you just put it at the end of the syllable. In any case, most Chinese people would just consider the tone to come with the syllable as a whole and not give nucleus and vowels any thought whatsoever. Please note that in some cases two letters can represent one vowel sound, and also be the nucleus. It is so in for instance wei2 where ei is one sound. In such cases where to put the diacritic is a matter of writing convention.

On Chinese go terms: There are many terms to be found in magazines and go books and a lot of borrowing has taken place between Japanese and Chinese. But in practice not so many terms are being used in real life discussion of games, and more importantly it seems to be very flexible when and how to use a term.

Sometimes Chinese go players even surprise each other with the way they use different terms. I have a friend who is a go pro and he will frequently say "this diagram" (zhe4tu3) when talking about a variation on a real board. This is equally strange in Chinese as in English as there are no diagrams on the real board and many other go players often react at his way of using the word. I'm guessing it is resulting from the fact that the only books he ever read since graduating high-school are go books, making his vocabulary a little skewered.

From a non-native speaker, but avid go player living in Shanghai. Cheers!

JF and Kanin gave much more detailed replies, but in a nutshell - it's not the u or the e or the i that takes the second tone, it's wei! How can you give a tone to a letter without giving that tone to the whole syllable?