They do do that, right? And even on foxy bot accounts indicated by a dog symbol.
Why is that?
5 Likes
Perhaps theyāre homophones in Standard Chinese?
3 Likes
So arenāt cats dominating everything? 
1 Like
More importantly, why do US Americans call humans ādogā?
6 Likes
Itās pronounced dawg.
5 Likes
dog is āgouā in chinese
Alpha Go, the word Go sounds like āgouā
hence AIās eventually are well known as dogs
22 Likes
English is funny and has no self identity. It borrows from any source possible, often with no logical reason behind the usage. The amount of slang that eventually makes itās way into bonafied English dictionaries is staggering. James Nicoll once stated:
āWe donāt just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down
alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle through their pockets for new vocabulary.ā
I find that statement to be hilariously accurate 
.
11 Likes
Wasnāt it Ke Jie tweeted something like āIām gonna fight this dogā. Did he made it famous?
1 Like
no, it became common just because of the name of the bot āAlpha Goā
english names/words are often translated thru pronunciationsā¦and the word Go just sounds so much like dog, it became popular when the word Alpha Go spread aroundļ¼Alpha Go just simply translates to Alpha Dog, and once this got popular all other bots that came up afterwards are just called dogs
2 Likes
Itās funny that the Chinese pronunciation is based on the English pronunciation of the word Go, which is borrowed from the Japanese, who probably based their pronunciation on a variant of the Chinese term.
Itās like the Google translate game where you feed a sentence through a few languages to get utter gibberish in return, except this one took a few ages
9 Likes
Senseiās library seems to confirm this last part: Etymology of Go at Sensei's Library
@dangomango, Senseiās library lists ęē¾å¤“ (literally, ātwisting sheepās headā) as one of the Chinese phrases for ladder. Would you happen to know how that came about?
Yes, itās based on the ę£ character, which is used for general strategic board games (in particular chess-like games) in Japanese. The é³čŖćæ (lit. reading by sound), which is the Chinese pronunciation of ę£, is ć (ki), which is a lot closer to the Chinese pronunciation of the character (qĆ), whereas the čØčŖ (lit. reading by explanation), which is the Japanese pronunciation, is ć (go). The character ē¢ is derived from ę£, yet only has a āChineseā é³čŖćæ pronunciation, which coincides with the čØčŖćæ for ę£. Itās quite weird.
4 Likes
never heard of ęē¾å¤“
i usually only watch 9d games on fox, which is where all the actions are happening
they rarely discuss the games with go terms, instead they just show diagrams/examples of what players might do next in chat
itās like tesuji = ęē, which literally means tendon part of the hand/arm, some/most go terms in chinese does not make much sense
some are borrowed from japanese directly
moyo = ęØ”ę · = appearance
2 Likes
Wow, so even the Chinese are using Japanese loanwords to discuss go
1 Like
As a Chinese speaker I concur. Some words are ported directly from Japanese. But it seems the terminologies are less frequently used than in Japan or in the west.
Responding to the original post though, I find it very strange to use an animal species name (aside from other negative connotations the word dog brings in Chinese) to refer to the game. Itās likely a lazy pronunciation hack above anything else.
These days the trendy words tend to be some colloquial abbreviation of formal phrases. As an example, the occupation programmer ēØåŗå is more commonly known as ē å. Which roughly translates to coding peasants. While itās mainly just a gig, I find the term much more derogatory than their proper counterparts.
4 Likes
noļ¼in fact Chinese go item is more effective and interesting than Japaneseļ¼ it is translated like airāāliberty jump fly kick(okay as a Chinese i also donāt know their English or Japanese item Ā¬_Ā¬ļ½ļ¼
if these items you point are about go, I think you have some mistake about Chinese go item.In fact Chinese have the whole item system almost absolutely independ on others.
Sorry I didnāt get you. Would you mind clarifying what you mean by āwhole system absolutely depend on othersā?
sorryļ¼it is independ and i just want to edit itĀ¬_Ā¬ļ½
Well, of course, I donāt mean to suggest that Chinese people are not using Chinese terminology at all to discuss go. I would imagine that go discussion in China predominantly uses Chinese words that have been in use for many centuries, perhaps often even predating the introduction of the game to Japan.
Hence, I found it quite interesting that @dangomango and @dittlieo say that some terms are actually borrowed from the Japanese language.