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Go Terms in Four Languages

We have gotten a second shipment of Chihyung Nam’s new book, “Go Terms”.  This is a great book for Seattle Go Center players, since it compares Go terms across four languages: English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.  While English is the most common language at the Go Center, a lot of our stronger players use Japanese, Chinese or Korean as their first language.

“Go Terms” is available in our book and equipment shop for $25, including tax.  (We are sorry, but we do not do mail order or internet sales.)

The book is organized for English readers, with explanations in English, and diagrams, and the corresponding Asian words, along with their Romanized versions.  There are tables in the back of the book to help Japanese, Chinese and Korean speakers find corresponding terms in English.

Readers will find that many Japanese terms are listed in the English columns as well, such as komi, sente and hane.  In other situations, Ms. Nam suggests using English terms, which would make the game more understandable to beginners who speak English.  So she uses “corner pattern” for joseki,  and “play elsewhere” for tenuki.   Often there is not an exact match across all four languages. The entry on “Continuous atari” includes a comparison of 7 Asian terms, including the Japanese oiotoshi, and the Korean chokchoksu.

Chihyung Nam was one of the first female pros in Korea, and she is a good friend of the Seattle Go Center.  She is a professor at the Buduk Studies program at Myungji University, and has represented Korea at several international conferences on unifying Go rules. Her earlier book, “Contemporary Go Terms”, went out of print a long time ago, when Oromedia Publishing closed.  We are very happy that she has thoroughly rewritten her book, and found a new publisher.   Report and photo by Brian Allen