Anyone speak Japanese?

[StoneFrog]

Well im trying to learn shogi, biggest thing is trying to figure out the pieces. ATM im just looking at the general shape and trying to associate it to each piece. Like the bishop has a squiggly thing on the left top, and the rook has a flat head type of deal.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some tip on how to at least try to read it, and associate it to a word. I know they are called different things like Gin-shou (something general? gold or silver?). I have no idea where to start looking at the Japanese symbol to read it.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

You don't need to learn Japanese to play Shogi. Knowing the English name of each piece and the corresponding kanji ("Japanese symbol") should suffice.

King = 王
Rook = 飛
Promoted rook = 竜
Bishop = 角
Promoted bishop or horse = 馬
Gold = 金
Silver = 銀
Promoted silver = 成銀
Knight = 桂
Promoted knight = 成桂
Lance = 香
Promoted lance = 成香
Pawn = 歩
Promoted pawn or tokin = と

Note that the actual meaning of each kanji doesn't necessarily correspond with the English name of the piece.

[kitsune]

The Wiki article on Shogi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi) has a fairly good explanation of the kanji and meanings.

It could break them down further. 王 is ou (king); 玉 is gyoku (jewel); 竜 is ryuu (dragon); 金 is kin (gold), and so on.

Learning kanji isn't difficult. You just become familiar with the shapes. They are made up of shapes called radicals and elements. 冫 is the water or ice radical. 勹 is the wrapping enclosure. 凵 is the open box. Kanji themselves are sometimes radicals. 月 is the kanji for moon, and a radical in the kanji 角 and 肢 and 有 and many others. 人 is the kanji for person and a radical in 内 and 以 and 朕 and others.

Kaku 角 (the "bishop") is made of the radicals 勹 and 月. Kei 桂 (the "knight") is made of 木 and 土. You don't have to learn all about radicals, though. You can break down the kanji into recognizable shapes in any way you want. Like uma 馬 (horse) is a radical itself without parts but you can break it down visually: an open rectangle with two horizontal lines and an upright above four legs and a tail.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yea, it's not too difficult to learn kanji. And it can be useful in other things (communications in China and to some extent even Korea) But there are a lot of them. And knowing the meaning in English can be a lot easier than being able to understand them in the context of Japanese, since for example a single kanji can have different pronunciations and meanings.

[StoneFrog]

oh i didn't realize there were multiple alphabets as well. I've started to get more familiar with identifying the pieces, lance, bishop and silver i still have a bit of trouble identifying.

I thought it best to at least try to learn a bit, more out of respect than anything.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yea, that's one of the most difficult parts of the Japanese language. There are 4 writing systems (Kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji), and 2 number systems (Arabic and Chinese numerals). And they are all combined together.

[kitsune]

There are a lot of kanji/hanzi. Some Chinese dictionaries have more than 100,000 of them. To be highly literate in Mandarin, however, you only need to know six or seven thousand. In Japanese you need to know about half that many.

It's not as bad as it sounds. They're concept symbols, somewhat like pictures. It's like using ☂ for umbrella, ♡ for heart. More abstract, but similar idea. 心 instead of ♡. 傘 instead of ☂. Once you become familiar with the system, it makes a lot of sense and is quite simple.

There's no alphabet, though. The kana are syllabaries. It's similar to an alphabet in that they are phonetic symbols, but they represent sound units rather than letters. Syllables (or rather morae): ka, ki, ku, ke, ko or ta, chi, tsu, te, to. Consonants are always paired with a vowel, except for the syllabic n.