I have been practicing martial arts in Poland, Okinawa, Japan, Chicago, and Washington State.
Three continents, three national languages, a single set of commands in Japanese.
Similarly, when using the first computer I purchased (Atari 800XL), I never changed the system settings to the local Polish language. Somehow, even back then, I knew that if I wanted to take computers seriously, I needed to learn in the language of origin. To this day, when I see family or friends struggling with Polish menus, I helplessly shrug my shoulders despite being an architect and a director-level software developer.
It is called lingua franca in trade business, or lingua latina in intellectual circles.
Europe has had Latin and especially Greek for the past three thousand years. Scientists, clergy, and lawyers use Latin names to be precise in biology and medicine, and even in everyday writing (e.g., for "et cetera", "et al.", and thousands of other words). Everybody knows enough Greek to understand what "geo-logy" or "anthropo-morphic" means.
The worldwide community of Japanese martial arts practitioners uses Japanese.
This is not because Japanese is particularly easy, nor does anyone expect practitioners to become fluent.
We learn Japanese so we can distinguish the nuanced difference between, for example, the two "hook-punch swings", kagi-tsuki and furi-tsuki. OK, I am showing off.
The alternative, which is translating everything into the local language, would shatter the single most important thing that connects us to each other and to the source: the integrity of the common art.
Until this point, I have avoided using Japanese names in my writing, except for commonly known terms like "karate" or "dojo".
However, as I am writing this publication, I want to learn and practice just enough Japanese to build a common language for the art.
Please expect to see notation such as this, and I will explain the rest as we progress.
- <ruby>kagi-tsuki<rt>かぎつき</rt></ruby> ・ <ruby>鉤突き<rt>かぎつき</rt></ruby>
- <ruby>furi-tsuki<rt>ふりつき</rt></ruby> ・ <ruby>振り突き<rt>ふりつき</rt></ruby>