![[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]](../../images/stone-hello.png)
StartingPoints
ReferenceSection
About
Referenced by MessagesToPeopleC... ReadingNonEnglish... BQM99
Homepages RichardHunter
|
Basic Japanese for reading go books
Keywords: Books & Publications
黒 先 白 死
To read and enjoy Japanese go books, you only need to learn a very small number of kanji. Of course, that number won't let you understand every word of a discussion book. But many books of tsumego and tesuji problems use a convenient format of headers and titles that use a limited set of kanji.
First, you want to know whether the problem is Black to play or White to play. So the first kanji to learn are these two colours.
Black 黒
White 白
There are two commnon patterns for indicating who is to play.
Turn 番
First 先
That's enough to get started!
Sometimes the desired result is given in the problem. Or the result may be mentioned in the answer. Typical results are living, killing, and making a ko. There are also two different kanji used for life. Also ko is often written in katakana or kanji.
Death 死
Life 生 き
Life 活
Ko コ ウ
Ko 劫
So here are some typical combinations
Black to play 黒 番
Black to play and live 黒 先 生 き
Black to play and kill White 黒 先 白 死
White to play and live 白 先 生 き
White to play and kill Black 白 先 黒 死
Next, it helps to know which answer diagram is correct. They are usually labeled.
Correct 正 解
Failure 失 敗
So here are the most important kanji.
黒, 白, 番, 先,
死, 生 い, 活, コ ウ, 劫,
正 解, 失 敗.
Links to pages showing the kanji with nice fonts and animated strokes
Home Page: http://www.gahoh.com/home.html
Black (kuro) http://www.gahoh.com/movie/kanji/11kaku/koku3975.html
White (shiro) http://www.gahoh.com/movie/kanji/05kaku/haku4772.html
This is a copy of the living page
"Basic Japanese for reading go books" at
Sensei's Library.
2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
|