John Fairbairn wrote:Sorry if I was off-topic, my understanding was that a "type of move" refers to the shape that we get after the move. I wasn't sure if oshitsubushi falls into that category.
jlt: it was indeed an oshitsubushi,
Thanks, John!
John Fairbairn wrote:Nevertheless, in Japanese, the vast majority of go terms do express both form and function. This is not necessarily the case in English. Is that a handicap?
The reason the Japanese terms are so efficient is that almost all are verbal nouns. That is, they are nouns and so are capable of describing a thing (or state), but they retain the verbal idea and so express a function.
We have something similar in English. Strictly, we could say we have an identical form, as in "cutting," but in practice we dislike such forms and gravitate instead towards achieving the same effect by a double use of the base word. e.g. "turn," "cut," "stretch" or "block" can be both a verb and a noun.
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But several questions arise. Is the dual-use phenomenon actually useful? I'm sure it is. Is it in wider use in Japanese? I suspect it is, in which case do they have an edge? Do the different forms in English produce a different effect?
The last question I think is a good one to ponder. When we say "extension" do we subconsciously think rather more about the state or shape then the function ("extend") than the Japanese do with the dual-use verbal noun (hiraki)? I think we do, and I think you can tell that from the way the thinking typically goes after that (to me, commentaries devised in English have quite a different feel from those devised in Japanese - and e.g. those in German feel different from both).
Where we do have verb/noun pairs, such as enclose/enclosure, I think that the noun lacks much dynamic feeling, and that lack can be a hindrance to English speaking go learners.
We can borrow Japanese terms, but surely a term such as "kosumi" poses great problems in English. It offers no sense of function, and so we use it entirely as a descriptive word ("diagonal move"). Terms such as warikomi and sashikomi and atekomi fall into the same category.
Here I disagree. The tendency in English to use a word as both noun and verb comes to the rescue. Most English speakers may say
diagonal move instead of kosumi, and may not use any of the -komi words at all. But those who do will either use the Japanese verb, such as kosumu, or simply use kosumi English style, as both a noun and a verb. Hane is a good example; so are atari and tenuki.
If we accept this combination of form and function as desirable, then does it not follow that we should be trying to extend the vocabulary in some way? After several decades of trying that, I'd say it's futile - most western go players seem not to want to listen. But if I'm wrong or too cynical - and I hope I am - and there is an appetite to extend the vocabulary, Tami's insight and injunction are worth highlighting. I personally would lean towards combining form and function at once, simply because even if we have a relative lack of such terms we are already familiar with them, e.g. block. But there is much to be said for taking the apprentices' route of learning the basic descriptive words first and then adding the more complex words as mastery and appreciation of the beauty of go develop.
When I came back from Japan I taught people Japanese terms, unless there were already English terms that I knew. I got a little resistance, but I took the attitude that these terms were go jargon, not Japanese per se. Chess has mate, check, en passant, Zugzwang, fianchetto, etc. Bridge has finesse and winkle. But go, I realized, has many terms to learn, and that is a burden on the beginner, even while the terms are also an aid to understanding. New English terms have arisen, such as kick and footsweep. Temperature has been adopted from combinatorial game theory, with a change in meaning. We are gradually building an English go vocabulary, but it will take time.