Empty Board

Language Games
February 24, 2003
by William Cobb

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that the limits of your language are the limits of your world. There is a lot of truth in this. It is very difficult to have a clear grasp of things we lack the vocabulary to talk about. Like almost any entertaining idea, this also applies to go.

At one time American players often tried to learn as many Japanese go terms as  possible. Some found it an effective way to intimidate other players, but it also made it possible to talk about the game with a kind of precision that was impossible otherwise. While a few Japanese terms have proved indispensable, such as hane, ko, and atari, nowadays we use English translations for some Japanese terms, such as "shortage of liberties" for "damezumari". Many other useful terms have simply been dropped, however, and this has led to a problem.

Of course, we don't need Japanese terms, but we do need a fairly complex go vocabulary. Take ko, for example. Without expressions that clearly distinguish different kinds of ko we easily fall into muddled thinking and poor playing. Many players don't have names for different kinds of kos at their disposal, which easily leads them to look at all kos as though they were essentially similar. This is a big mistake. There are kos where both players face the same risk (even kos) and there are one-sided kos ("flower-viewing" kos), that is, kos where one player has almost nothing at stake and the other faces a large loss. Finding one of these can let you win a lost game. Then there are kos where you will have to give the other player more than two moves elsewhere in order to win, usually called "approach move" kos-a very expensive kind of ko if you must win it to stay in the game. If these distinctions are clearly marked in our vocabularies we are much more likely to notice the difference in our games.

So sharpen up your vocabulary if you want to sharpen up your play.

Past columns by William Cobb are archived at http://www.slateandshell.com/billcobb.asp

Back to Columns