Re: Is Go just a refuge for Nipponophiles and cranks?

Magnulus wrote:
Since it is also played in China and Korea, why not use the Chinese or Korean words if you insist on not using English? 

  It's not so much a question of "instisting on not using English"
as it is a question of keeping to the established convention which
the vast majority of people use.

  The Japanese go terms are usually very specific and well-defined
while their "translations" are often broader and less well defined.
For example "kikashi" is usually translated as "forcing move". However,
that's a rather misleading translation because the concept of "forcing
move" has a much broader meaning than the more specific term "kikashi"
(kikashis are forcing moves, but not all forcing moves are kikashi).

  It is often quite difficult to translate a term so that it keeps
the entire specific meaning of the original.

  Some terms are even sometimes blatantly mistranslated. For example
you sometimes see the term "honte" translated as "book move". This is,
AFAIK, a mistranslation because it assumes that the "hon" kanji
always means "book" and that it means that in this context too
(in reality the "hon" kanji means other things too, such as "true"
and "real", which is probably closer to the real meaning of that
kanji in this context; the often seen translation "honest move" is,
AFAIK, much closer to the original meaning than "book move").

  So with all this confusion and too-broad-translations it may often
be better to just stick to the original word.

  So why Japanese and not the equally accurate Chinese or Korean
terms? Because it's the Japanese go history which has mostly affected
western go and everybody knows the Japanese terminology.
  (Of course there may in some cases be a bit of nipponphilia
involved. I bet a considerable percentage of western go players
like anime too... :P )

I'm trying to learn some Go playing. I am using GnuGo. 
 That's probably one of the worst ways of learning the game.
 That method may work with chess, but it definitely is not a great
idea with go.

If the opponent beats me, what difference does it make really? 

  The fact that the computer beats you doesn't mean that the computer
is a good teacher. Computers are really bad at playing good and
balanced go and if you learn too much from their style of play, you
will just be learning bad habits. If you learn to beat a computer
at go you will get a rather negative surprise when you try to play
against a human.
  While Gnu Go may play at about 5-8 kyu strength, its playing style
is too erratic for it to be a good teacher. It will often miss simple
things which are essential for a human of that strength to know. For
example it may just some time suddenly tenuki a situation for no
good reason, allowing its own group to die. It also has a quite poor
concept of strategy (and it usually can be beaten quite easily with
a strong strategy).

  Playing against a human (especially it if happens in person) is a
much better way of learning. He can comment on your moves (during or
after the game) and he can adapt his own playing to be more didactic.

I don't know if Go is the same, but my experience in Chess has been that if you just play games, you don't really get better quickly. Sure you progress, but very slowly. 

  Well, if you just play games without anyone teaching you anything
then it might be true, but even a small amount of teaching and a lot
of played games should make you better fairly fast.
  There's a proverb which says "lose your first 50 games fast", which
tries to say that you should play a lot and don't care too much if
you win or lose.

Sure, the rules are simple but I suspect alot of Go expertise just comes from playing alot of games and carrying around the equivalent of thousands of databases in your head, and not so much logic and calculation. 

  I would not say that.
  Strength in go comes from logic (whole-board strategical thinking)
and calculation (local tactical reading skills), both of which come
through the experience of playing tons of games and practicing tons
of tsumego.
  The only "database" you may have in your head are josekis, but even
those are not all that important at kyu levels.
.

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