great resource. thanks a lot!

my dojo used to use much more terminology than they do now; sometimes when I teach I start calling out commands in Japanese and all the students just look at me like, "what the ...?"

check this gold mine out


http://drip.colorado.edu/~samw/ska/karate.terms

We use Japanese terminology constantly in our Shotokan club.

The main reason being when a practitioner wishes to grade with a senior instructor from Japan, such as Kanazawa, only this terminlogy will be used.


Mark.

Using 1 common language in a sport makes it all easier
Like the use of french in fencing or spanish in Latin American dancing
Using local languages makes it very hard to understand for others
If a high ranked instructor from the UK comes to my country and then uses terms as lunge punch and bowstance, most will be lost as we have no idea what lunge means
In countries where they do not speak any english people wouldn't understand anything at all without an interpreter translating all the time ( so not just when the teacher is explaining)
In Judo we had te system of 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc hipthrow ( kawaishi system) but because I knew the japanese words and their meaning I could figure out what the thow should look like

This is not a thread for debating as it has already been beaten to death recently. It's just to provide information.

huge resource of terminology (pdf)
http://home.planet.nl/~tamo/pdf/Terminology%202000%20--%20web.pdf