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Bob McGuigan: I object to the having the page "ten game match" being an alias for jubango. In fact I object to what is becoming a common use of jubango to stand for ten game match. First it is a Japanese term which has perfectly satisfactory equivalents in Western languages. Historically the jubango were Japanese events between players in Japan so it could be argued that for people who are not Japanese, and players who are not Japanese, a term without specific ethnic connotation should be used. As is well known, the term jubango in Japanese literally means ten game match, and a twenty game match, of which there are historical examples, is naturally a nijubango. I'll hazard a guess that if Gu and Lee were playing a 20 game match we would not see it being called "nijubango" in the Western press.
Bob McGuigan: I object to the having the page "ten game match" being an alias for jubango. (...) As is well known, the term jubango in Japanese literally means ten game match, (...).
This is a rather curious argument for an objection.
I'll hazard a guess that if Gu and Lee were playing a 20 game match we would not see it being called "nijubango" in the Western press.
Well, we will only know that when they play a 20 game match, won't we?
I created the alias precisely for those who object against the usage of jubango, so that they would have an alternative. Now it turns out to be root to even more discontent. And did you know that ...
Culture and language are adorable things.
Bob: Dieter I appreciate your intention when you created the alias but it suggests to me that the term "jubango" is to be used instead of "ten game match" since people who want to use the latter are automatically referred to the jubango page. It is probably too late to do anything about promoting the term "ten game match" instead of "jubango" because jubango is already being used by many people in many places. I think of jubango as an alias of ten game match myself. But the historical importance of the Japanese matches works against that approach. The topic of the historical Japanese multi-game matches deserves a page of its own, not limited to ten game matches. What seems to be happening, as noted on the main page, is that outside of Japan the word jubango is becoming a special term for multi-game match. We see this because matches of other durations than ten games are listed on the jubango page now. I guess this follows the development of "spionkop" as you described.
Hi Bob,
It is probably too late to do anything about promoting the term "ten game match" instead of "jubango" because jubango is already being used by many people in many places.
That's precisely how language works. Transitive usage of existing terms, in time, location or scope, may initially appear wrong to the educated eye. If the adopted term leads to confusion, there is certainly good ground for objecting against it. But if the term becomes common parlour and people (after some research or education) use the term with the same coverage overall, then the term has acquired new meaning.
I understand your objection, as we're still in the transition phase, both for its esoteric aspect (why use a foreign term) as its potential factual incorrectness ("ten game match" for other numbers) but it looks like the race has been run already.
When the subject is scientific, one man should stand against the multitudes, if they're wrong, but when it's about language, a means for the multitudes to interact, the masses are always right.