Life In 19x19

Well for help in the future

As if you were reading English pronounce weiqi as way-chee. This will hopefully make it easier for the person to understand.

I suggest we all avoid these problems by switching to Esperanto.







Oh! Wait. That's based on Indo-European languages.


Back to the drawing board!

John Fairbairn wrote:Going back further, I can't recall any English speaking chess players have trouble with Zugzwang but as that is spelt with a zed I can easily imagine some people using the zed for that reason.

I have unfortunately heard just about every phoneme in Zugzwang get mangled by English speakers: "z" instead of "tz", "u" as in "buck" rather than as in "book", "w" instead of "v", "a" as in "can" rather than as in "con". Perhaps the best solution is to follow Nigel Short's example and pronounce it "Volkswagen".

For some reason the one that bugs me the most is the pronunciation of "en prise" without the "s", which seems to be a specialty of British speakers.

dfan wrote:[..]

I have unfortunately heard just about every phoneme in Zugzwang get mangled by English speakers: "z" instead of "tz", "u" as in "buck" rather than as in "book", "w" instead of "v", "a" as in "can" rather than as in "con". Perhaps the best solution is to follow Nigel Short's example and pronounce it "Volkswagen".

[..]

As I’m a native speaker of German this made me spray my late night Ersatzkaffee all over my keyboard—through my nose

But the “a” in Tsook tswang is actually pronounced like the “u” in “buck”

Japanese has a much higher chance of being pronounced correctly by the uninitiated than Chinese, as without tones every word without exception is automatically wrong.

Subotai wrote:Well for help in the future

As if you were reading English pronounce weiqi as way-chee. This will hopefully make it easier for the person to understand.

And to make it even more understandable to Chinese listeners, pronouncing it as two questions with no pause in between fairly well mimics the correct tones: Way?Chee?

dfan wrote: I have unfortunately heard just about every phoneme in Zugzwang get mangled by English speakers: "z" instead of "tz", "u" as in "buck" rather than as in "book", "w" instead of "v", "a" as in "can" rather than as in "con". Perhaps the best solution is to follow Nigel Short's example and pronounce it "Volkswagen".

For some reason the one that bugs me the most is the pronunciation of "en prise" without the "s", which seems to be a specialty of British speakers.

Huh! These are pronounced identically in the dialect I speak.

John Fairbairn wrote:
We do have aword in 3nglish that begins with ts and I haven't heard anyone have trouble with it - tsunami, now common also as a metaphor.

But that is a PERFECT example. Yes, I imagine that English speakers NOW have much less trouble with an initial "ts" since decades ago "tsunami" became a word in English. "Tsunami" did not occur frequently if at all in English when I was younger. Used to be the deceptive term "tidal wave" <<properly that would have been what is known as a "bore", but those are rare in the sense that very few rivers get "bores" >>

So why think English can't "happily" take in, for example, the Japanese go terms. Why would it be harder for English to absorb those than "tsunami", "typhoon", "tycoon", etc. Yes, it would be a slower process, but that is just because only a small percentage of English speakers have any involvement with go.

DrStraw wrote: Huh! These ["buck" and "book"] are pronounced identically in the dialect I speak.

Interesting! I wonder whether your pronunciation of these words sounds like "buck" or "book" to me. You are American, right? I googled for a couple of minutes and it seemed like merging these two sounds is more a UK thing.

Then there's pin/pen, marry/merry/Mary, etc...

So why think English can't "happily" take in, for example, the Japanese go terms. Why would it be harder for English to absorb those than "tsunami", "typhoon", "tycoon", etc.

I don't think anyone here is arguing about the ability of English speakers to absorb loan words per se.

The debate, it seems to me, is about three aspects:

1. The degree of the learning load. Dumping a big load of new Japanese terms on an unsuspecting reader was a strategy used in early Ishi Press books, and has been constantly and heavily criticised ever since. Market forces prevailed, and the style has changed. Similarly, if I were to present something to you along the lines of "seriai is an important aspect of semenogo and is one of the commonest features of the chubansen, but the thrill of the chase can be deceptive - the result is often semekirenai", I have no doubt that you could eventually learn all these doubts, but somehow I don't think I'd be doing you or our European friends any favours.

My impression is that for most established players the problem has already been solved in the form of a compromise list along the lines presented by uberdude. There may be debate about inclusion or omission of some terms, but this is small scale.

How many of those words you retain for beginners is a separate question. I rarely teach beginners so it's not something I have a strong view on.

2. Whether the terms are used correctly. I tend to harp on this topic but I recognise others find it a sideshow (their loss, I feel, but ...). Absorbing loan words with a meaning different from that in the original language is rather common, but the debate in go has to be whether this matters or not. E.g. does it matter that many English speakers think a yose-ko has something to do with the endgame?

3. Use of terms for showing off rather than communicating technical information - e.g. goban, kifu, moku. Different people have different lists and it seems that most people deprecate the practice - the debate is to what degree it matters. Does it make the game more or less palatable to newcomers?

There are other possible aspects, but some of them I regard as red herrings. For example, the alleged benefit of using Japanese as a lingua franca among westerners. In practice I can't see any significant benefit. If a Turkish guy uses shicho instead of the Turkish word for ladder, how does that help me? I need to know what he is saying about the ladder. But if I know enough Turkish to know that, then presumably I would also know the Turkish word for ladder.

Lingua francas are fascinating things. We would all readily think of the example of Latin, or French in diplomacy, and pidgin comes to mind. but in most cultures the written language of a nation is also often a form of lingua franca uniting people who speak often disparate dialects. What all these forms have in common, however, is that the lingua franca is learnt as a complete second language. It is not a mish-mash of a few foreign terms - a vocabulary list with no grammar, which is the idea often touted for go.

dfan wrote:

DrStraw wrote: Huh! These ["buck" and "book"] are pronounced identically in the dialect I speak.

Interesting! I wonder whether your pronunciation of these words sounds like "buck" or "book" to me. You are American, right? I googled for a couple of minutes and it seemed like merging these two sounds is more a UK thing.

Then there's pin/pen, marry/merry/Mary, etc...

Well, I am American now but I was born and raised with a Yorkshire accent and only came to the US 40 years ago.

Stumbled over this a few minutes ago and had to think of this thread …

I thought of late American columnist Mike Royko and the prix fixe dinner.

Fedya wrote:I thought of late American columnist Mike Royko and the prix fixe dinner.

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.