Home >> Games & Cards >> Board Games

How to Learn Basic Japanese for Reading Go Books

Go is a highly strategic game played by the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. It involves a 19 by 19 board, where one player takes black and the other takes white. The game is estimated to have originated around the 3rd century BC. The purpose of the game is to surround as much territory as possible. While there are a handful of English books on the subject, to really study the thousands of texts on the game, you'll have to learn some basic Japanese.

Things You'll Need

Japanese to English Dictionary
Japanese Go Books

Instructions

- 1
  Acquire several Go books that have primarily images rather than text. A good place to start is pro-game and pro-review books. These have primarily game walkthroughs, along with analysis. Books with Go puzzles and problems are also a good place to start.
- 2
  Learn Hiragana. Hiragana is half the Japanese alphabet, used for pronouncing native Japanese words. It's written in a cursive style. There are 48 characters. If you study daily, you should be able to have them memorized within a week or two.
- 3
  Learn Katakana. Like Hiragana, Katakana is another Japanese alphabet that's used primarily to pronounce more foreign words. You should also be able to learn Katakana in about two weeks with daily study.
- 4
  Start studying basic Kanji. Kanji are specific words written in Chinese characters that aren't spelled out with Hiragana or Katakana. You don't need a mastery of Kanji to study Go books, but you do need to know the basics. Start learning 5-10 Kanji characters per week.
- 5
  Continue your learning by reading Go books and looking up words that you don't understand in a Japanese to English dictionary. Your Go-related vocabulary will grow surely but surely.

Board Games