I think it thinks of abbreviations.
MW for midwest, ES for elementary school… there are a ton of those.
Or, take “hjbhlefr”. It sounds like some nordic language. I’ve read icelandic names that sound more random than that.
So I guess the algorithm just falls back to familiar data and produces random pictures.
Does anyone know of any Japanese language Go forums/message boards (like this one)?
Part of the reason I want to know is because I’m looking for which newspaper or website has the best coverage of the Gosei tournament.
That’s interesting. It’s nice that their webmaster updated the profile pages a few months back to include their games and results. Back before that I believe the profiles only had the biographic and win/loss numbers, but not the specific tournament games. Now the profile page is actually useful to check often.
Igo RPG pre-release gameplay
A lot of people might be keen to dismiss this as a troll question, but it is true that a significant amount of Americans actually believe that Jesus wrote the Bible in “American” sometime in the past and the do not seem conscious of what “year 2022” means or that their country was established in 1776 and that Jesus has been dead for 1400+ years before Colombus was even born.
It is very odd, but at least the fontamentist Baptists can be considered to be a cut above the average on this subject, not for any particular penchant for knowledge, but because a good portion of them are pedantic about being King James version Bible ONLY, so they understand that there was an original and that there were many translations.
Sadly they then go to claim that the translation is better than the original Old Testament in Hebrew and than the original New Testament in Koine Greek, but hey, you got to keep the facepalm wave alive, eh? 
Some days I dream of enrolling in a public school in America.
It must be a unique experience.
I’m reading Maeda’s tsumego from the beginning and trying to really understand all of the words rather than just playing tsumego. I have a question on the Japanese language I’m hoping someone can help me with. My question is about を, or the lack of it. Maybe not the best place for learning Japanese but at least you all know Go 
From my beginner’s understanding I would expect the verb 作れ “to make” to be preceded by を and a noun. But I have the noun 眼 without を. Just “二眼作れません” and not "二眼を作れません”。
Am I misunderstanding the sentence or is there an omitted を? If it is omitted, is it common to omit を in Go books?
By the way, on the same page when describing the variation diagram it uses …眼を取ります。(showing how black can take an eye away when White played 2 at 3 in the diagram above).
Thanks for your comment because it made me realize that I was searching for 作れません/作れます but I had left out the context of 眼.
Looking at what you linked I see を omitted in subtitle headers. And I can imagine it being omitted in captions too. But I’m still confused why it was omitted in text. Anyway, at least I see that を can be omitted.
By the way, that Nihon kiin lecture series seems interesting. At least for learning language.
They give out much better ones this time.
If someone is interested, there’s this video in English about Japanese number words. Not particularly informative to be honest. The gist is that since all Japanese words sound the same, they can be expressed through numbers. I watched a puzzle game playthrough which is almost completely based on this nonsense. Quite funny because the player struggles like hell, especially later on. But not too much insightful. It’s like 104 てんし, ha, clever. And a lot I just didn’t understand. But some stood out. Some are mnemonics used to remember history dates.
1192 いいくに good country, mnemonic to remember when Kamakura Shogunate was established (though nowadays it’s established in 1185 so it’s いいはこ instead). Or something.
1582 いちごパンツ mnemonic for Honnō-ji Incident - Wikipedia. I’m really not sure why 8 would be read as pan. But I’m dumb so. This means strawberry panties. Which is why in ancient depictions you can see Oda Nobunaga wearing these panties.
Then there’s 141421356 which is square root of 2. 一夜一夜に人見頃（ひとよひとよにひとみごろ） Really not sure what it means though.
Neat to see the 9x9 game. I’m still playing quite a few of them but starting to move more into 13x13 for quick play. I don’t play much 19x19 on OGS anymore but I do play on Fox. I think I have seen that study group (goonline) advertised before.
=========
As for learning language, I learned last night about this phrase I was confused about before:
黒１のさがりが急所で白は二眼作れません。
I bought a copy of A DICTIONARY OF JAPANESE GRAMMAR and I’m going through the introduction where they teach the characteristics of Japanese Grammar. I was not familiar with を (o / wo) being dropped but apparently it is fairly common, especially in questions. The point that the author makes is that を can be dropped when the “noun phrase” (which is the direct object of the verb as indicated by を) is not the focus.
In my sentence, I think the focus is really on “sagari ga” – the sagari is the vital point. After knowing that, it’s already clear that white cannot make 2 eyes. So the 2 eyes not being made is not the focus of the information being presented.
In the other direction, a Japanese colleague once told me that a Japanese mnemonic for irregular months was nishi muku samurai (“a samurai facing west”, or “ni 2, shi 4 mu 6, ku 9, juuichi 11”, the last one is got by reinterpreting 士).
Found this today.
American vs English spelling is always bringing me headache. Now I know where it comes from.
From this article essence, I think I’m allowed to be more elastic and use both without being stressed too much! 
Fun fact: the URL says “aluminum or aluminium” but that word isn’t present in the whole article.
Also not mentioned in the article but the one I come across at work is “canceled” vs “cancelled” with 2 Ls (apparently the more common British spelling). Words with the “ou” really stand out as being different and not-American, so they are easier to identify. But this single-letter vs double-letter wording is much less obvious and more difficult to determine which is better. And I think it is for this reason that both spellings are accepted (in both places, I believe).
By the way, now that I am learning Japanese, YouTube thinks that I also want to learn English and so I’ve watched a few videos intended for English learners. English really is a terrible language. Though we can’t blame the English too much. The Normans and others must share the blame.
I’m always looking for new things to read as I like to jump around a lot. There is a Go comic in the Nihon Ki-in’s magazine 碁ワールド called TENKI 天棋. I am wondering if anyone has read this, if they enjoyed it, and whether they think it is suitable (or at least readable) for a beginner (or can compare to Genki I, Genki II, etc). I am happy enough to look up words and use grammar guides and computer translation if needed, but some texts still go beyond me. Though presumably TENKI is for kids as it has the furigana (lucky if you already know how to speak the word). So I have a feeling it will be fine for me.
And if anyone has read this thing, do you know if there is a way to get back issues? Is it OK to just jump in? There is a brief synopsis.
If anyone is just wondering what this comic is, from what I know it’s a creative fiction set in the Edo period and it involves a lot of famous players like Shusaku, Shuwa, Ota Yuzo, and more. And sometimes even in believable situations.
I can’t really understand your post, but since you’re taking about Japanese and comics you have my “like”! 
I don’t know how any language could be called “terrible”. What’s terrible with it?
I find English quite handy and simple, yet I often feel confused or insecure, just like with the American English thing.
Today I suddenly realised that “login” has the root “log” (a piece of wood) which doesn’t seem to have any relationship with computers.
Since English is often straightforward with these mechanisms, I would’ve thought that “to log” would mean “to beat someone with a log” instead of “keeping written notes of what’s happening”. And “to log in” maybe “to put a log inside something”.
I couldn’t guess the link between that and “give credentials to enter a site”.
So I googled it and got my daily funny tale!
That’s fascinating, if you ask me.
Italian word for “login” is “autenticazione” which is really straightforward in meaning and etymology, but sounds awful and is likely to give some headache to a student!
Sometimes English is so simple and direct that we just can’t find a suitable translation and use the English word instead. Take “mouse” as an example.
Of course we have a name for the animal: it’s “topo”.
But when we had to name a brand new electronic pointing device in the shape of a mouse, we just couldn’t call it “topo” (like the French did). It’s so mundane and gross! Nobody in Italy would grab a “topo” to use a PC! 
And we couldn’t find a name that was that simple, so we just kept the English one, which wasn’t as gross because the translation gap was enough to avoid immediately thinking of the dirty animal!
We had a name for “computer”: “elaboratore”.
But it was long and ugly, so everybody’s using “computer” instead, with its specific Italian pronunciation: everything’s read as in Italian except for the “u” which has an English sound.
I mean, it’s a serial publication in one of the top (the top?) Go publications which can be purchased on Amazon (US and JP), delivered instantly electronically or mailed to US West coast in 2-7 days.
I thought the bigger stumbling block was the language.
I mean as far as learning. It just has so many irregularities. Just my impression from watching a few YouTube videos teaching English.
I haven’t looked this up online but a “log” is a record of events. Record of transactions, business, people, etc. People showing up to work on a project can put their name in a log of attendance. I assume this is was called “logging in” before computers were invented.
Yes, it does.
I decided that English doesn’t have rules at all: just an infinite list of exceptions! 
I learnt it mainly by ear, absorbing phrases from songs and movies. I have a very little base of grammar, but the biggest part of my knowledge is just mimicking something that I heard somewhere.
That’s it! And the funny part is the reason why a record is called like a piece of wood.
Hint: it comes from ships.
It seems it’s JLPT soon so nihongonomori woke up from its slumber. I like this N3 video, very packed with content. Especially compared with some of the previous livestreams where there was a lot of talking and not a lot of problem solving.
