Lol either way the name “Go” is a sorta mistranslation and from what i experienced does not draw people’s attention and in turn folly their expectations and preceptions.
By the way weiqi is a rough* translation of “ encircling game” 圍棋. Even by a glance, you can tell 圍 probably translates to the “surround or encircle” because the square surrounding its character.
Because how do I even pronounce that?
Baduk is relatively straightforward so people can google it if they overheard it somewhere. It’s harder with weiqi.
Ok youre missing the point. Either one isnt an english name or rough translation of the original name which meant “encircle”. This is a poll for a new english title.
Or just use the new english loan word “kivilläympäröintilautapeli” that’s almost as short to type and easy to pronounce as “go”, but a lot more describing!
Disclaimer
I’m not sure if it’s actually yet recognised by Oxford dictionary, since i made it up myself few hours ago
I’m not sure that using a new common English word to call the game would really help much. I think the main draw back of the name “go” is that it is also a common English word, which creates ambiguity and difficulty when searching for “go” topics online. Picking another English word like “surround” or “encircle” still has the ambiguity issues.
Take “chess” or “backgammon” for example. They don’t need an English name, and they benefit from having a unique word to refer to them. Over time, maybe “baduk” will gain a bit more traction, or maybe we should just call it “igo”.
Either way, nothing will change. A poll on this forum is not going to start some grass-roots movement that causes millions of English speakers to change their habits.
Personally I like the arguments given for calling it Baduk. It also feels good to pay homage to one of the three main Asian countries that helped to get it to where it is now as opposed to trying to Americanize it. I understand where you’re coming from as I think Go is a bit of a silly name for several reasons. However, I also don’t think renaming it to “Surround” or something similar is going to help at all. Baduk feels appropriate. Igo and Weiqi would also be fine, but I think a bit… I don’t know. Igo doesn’t feel like it has as much character as Baduk to me and Weiqi would be difficult to pronounce/research as a new player due to the difficulty in Romanizing the Chinese name.
I may be a bit biased on this (having studied Chinese for some time), but I didn’t know there was a problem with the word “Weiqi”. While most Americans do not pronounce “Qi” quite correctly, they do it well enough (by saying “Chee”) that there’s little confusion between it and other words. So Americans saying “Waychee” without respect for tone is perfectly okay and gets the idea of the name across (although maybe less so to a native Mandarin speaker).
And to be honest, while “Baduk” is ever so slightly pronounced closer to the original Korean (unless they say “Bay-duck” rather than the correct pronunciation of “Bah-duke”), it still has similar problems (Particularly with how Korean consonants work) with getting a native speaker to recognize it.
Just my two cents on the English pronunciation on both words
️ <3 It if you like it and we will tally up as another poll choice.]
