The value of using home country language

[Hordfest]

Hello everybody,

As a new practitioner of martial arts, specifically Shuri-ryu karate, I have found that there is a distinct emphasis (at least in my style) on respecting and knowing the traditional japanese names for strikes, blocks, etc. as well as the English. As a History major in college, I personally enjoy this traditionalist approach. However, just for conversation sake I wanted to get the opinion of people here on this matter.

Do you think that honoring the home country of your particular art's language is important? If so, how important? Or, are you of the opinion that for the sake of simplicity and practicality that we should only focus on learning the particular language of the country we are practicing in?

 

[yak sao]

I'm kind of split on this one.
Part of me likes the traditional language, the other part of me finds it impractical.
I study Wing Tsun, which traditionally uses the Cantonese language.
WT is very much a concept based art. What I have found over the years, is by using Chinese to describe the movements,
ie. pak sau, jum sau, tan sau etc. then people start to think of these things as blocks, or set positions. That is to say, they think of them as an object( nouns); when in fact, these are not set positions, or objects at all, but actions (verbs).

I'm of the mind set that if we were to communicate more in English, by telling people to sink their elbow, rather than saying jum sau, people would grasp it much sooner.

 

[Cyriacus]

Well, to Me it depends. I like the Techniques and such to be named in the Native Language. Because anything else is a Translation of it, as oppose to its Actual Name.

Anything else should be English but.

 

[Tez3]

Using the native langauge only works if the pronunciations are correct, if not they are just garbled nonsense.

 

[Xue Sheng]

My answer is yes and no

Is it necessary? No

Can it helpful? Yes

But then I train CMA with a sifu who speaks very good English however his native language is...well....3 different Chinese Dialects and I am not sure which one he considers his native language. However I have found that on occasion it helps in understanding and it helps my sifu in explaining if we do that in Mandarin....funny thing is that of the 3 dialects that is the only one I am pretty sure he does not consider native.

However in CMA you will find forms are labeled with Chinese metaphors and understanding those will help a lot as it applies to understanding the style

 

[clfsean]

I go for yes.

Simply because if I go to another CLF school, the sifu calls out "blah blah blah blah" for the techniques to drill in a combo, I don't have to think about translating what's actually meant in English to action.

L Poon Kiu, R Chuin Na, L Chuin Na, R Gwa Choy, L Kahp Choi ... that tells me everything I need to know rather than trying to see if his idea in English of "L Circle Bridge, R Anchor Control, Anchor Control with the other hand, R Hanging backfist then L overhead dropping like a stamp punch" is what I heard.

As long as the principles are understood, then the terminology for the simplest description works best... in this case... IMO... is Cantonese.

 

[tshadowchaser]

My instructor wanted everything in English. Now that I am no longer a part of that organization I find that most of the FMA people I train with use the vocabulary of the islands or Tagalog. Never having learned these in my early days makes it harder at times but I'm learning to use more of the native dialog.
I do think that keeping this part of the heritage of your system/style is important and should be instructed (if you can pronounce the words correctly and if you understand the meaning of the words)

 

[Steve]

I'm a pretty practical person. Generally, any labels we apply to the techniques are useful if they're accepted and understood.

Learning the native labels for techniques can be a good thing. I was talking to a friend who is a black belt in Judo, as well as a brown belt in BJJ. I was saying that I appreciate that BJJ isn't hung up on formalities and such, and he agreed. He said, though, that he wished there were some consistency to the terminology used in BJJ. In Judo, he said, he didn't need to know Japanese in order to train in Japan. No matter what language people spoke, because they stuck to the Japanese terminology, everyone spoke "Judo." Made sense to me and seems very pragmatic.

So, for me, honoring tradition isn't a huge concern. Being formal is definitely not. But regardless of what rationale one uses, a consistent lexicon of terminology is critical. And using the native language terminology is often an easy, well established, practical standard to use.

 

[David43515]

Steve commented on my main reason I favor it: consitancy. If you`re training in a fairly rare old family style I suppose you`re odds of ever training with someone else from another school are pretty reare too. So you can use whatever language or terms you and your classmates decide on. But if you`re going to move to another city and continue training or train with people from other schools, having a common terminology is a big help.