Re: =?gb2312?B?u9i4tDogTmFtZXMgb2YgdGhlIEdhbWUgR28=?=

[Steven Bretherick <sbretherick@xxxxxxxxx>]

In Japanese, the pronunciation for the Chinese "Qi"
character is "Ki". It's the "Ki" in the "Kisei" title
(which could be roughly translated "board game saint"),
and it's also the "Gi" in shogi. "Igo" is two
characters: "I" means "surround" and "Go" means the
game go (and has no other meaning as far as I know).
"Igo" is the formal name for the game, and "go" is an
abbreviation. Not sure when the Japanese started using
the "go" character, or why, but it's at least 400 years
old. Maybe if you post the question on rec.games.go
John Fairbairn or Andrew Grant will answer.

Sorry to take up computer go bandwidth with this
language digression, but it's rare to see a question  I
know the answer to ;-). Back to lurk mode ...

Steve

--- kking <lb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >As my minor contribution "Weiqi" in Chinese means
> surround chess. The "Ki"
> 
> >you refer to later (as a guess) is just the Qi bit.
> Qi is often used for
> 
>      In Chinese "Qi" is a general designation of
> games such as Go(Wei Qi),
>     Chess, Chinese Chess, Jumping Chess, etc. The
> "Ki" you refer to (I
> think)
>     is the ancient chinese character which
represents
> "Wei Qi" especially.
>     It's seldom used now and not included in the
> chinese system of my
> computer.
> >games so Chinese checkers is "xing qi" (star chess)
> or "? qi" (jumping
> chess
> >think ? is tao but haven't got a dictionary to
> hand). Chinese chess is
>             should be "tiao /tiau/",:)
> >"xiang qi" (elephant chess).
> >Regards,
> >Peter Smith
> >
> 
> 

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