Re: computer-go: Re: Joseki and Fuseki

[Song Li <sli@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for all your reply. I know what they are now. However...

On Fri, 10 May 2002, Richard Brown wrote:

> "Joseki" is easy to explain if you read Chinese.  In pinyin, the characters for
> the word "joseki" are:
>
>       ding4  meaning "established, fixed, determined, decided", and
>       shi2  meaning "stones".
>
> Thus, "joseki" corresponds exactly to the characters used for the Chinese
> technical term, "ding4 shi2".

This should be ding4 shi4 in chinese, where the second character is not
stone, but 'form', 'shape', etc. I know in japanese the character is
'stone', but not in chinese.

> "Fuseki" is a bit more confusing.  I had always thought that it's written using
> the characters:
>
>       bu2 (or bu4) meaning "non-" [a 4-stroke character], and
>       shi2 meaning "stones".
>
> That has always made sense to me:  Fuseki is the "non-stone" part of the game;
> there aren't any -- or at least there are very few -- stones on the board yet.
>
> But I may be wrong about this, because when I look at the InterGo dictionary at
>   <http://www.gobase.org/> , it shows for "fuseki" the characters:
>
>       bu4 meaning "cloth" [a 5-stroke character], and
>       shi2 meaning "stones".
>
> Maybe gobase used the wrong bu4 character?  Or maybe I have been wrong, all
> these years.

again, the shi2 is in Japanese. Also, although the bu4 does have the
meaning of cloth as a noun, its meaning in this word is 'to spread' or 'to
diffuse'.

> To further confound me, gobase claims that the Chinese technical term may be
> either "bu4 ju2", or "kai1 ju2", but it doesn't show the ju2 character at all,
> and I can't guess which one of several ju2 characters it might be:  Ball?
> Chrysanthemum?  Mandarin Orange?  Or the one that seems to connote an illicit
> love affair?

Yeah, in Chinese, we use both 'bu4 ju2' and 'kai1 ju2', but more often, we
use the former because it can stress more on the meaning of 'to spread'
the stones on the board, not only the 'to open' which is used in Chess.

>
> As for the kai1 character, I guess it must be the one that means "open" or
> "unfold" or "unseal" -- but this character is not shown at gobase, either.
>
> So, while I can guess at the meaning of kai1, I'm unsure about ju2, and
> I have some doubt whether bu4 means "non-" or "cloth".  Very strange.

Ju2 is a measure word used for games, whatever chess, go, or checker. It's
not chrysanthumum, though their pronunciations are exactly the same.

It could be used as "openning one ju2", or "play a couple of ju2's"

Song