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Mao is a piececlopedia entry. It is categorized as: Not categorized.
Mao.
Author: Fergus Duniho and Ben Good.
Web page created: 1999-01-15. Web page last updated: 2003-02-07
| Date | Name | Rating | Comment | Edit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mao. | ||||
Charles Gilman  | None | Perhaps it is because I am currently working on a variant combining elements of Shogi and Xiang Qi, but I have noticed another interpretation of the combination of letters 'Mao'. It could be interpreted as transliterating the Japanese for 'Horse King', in characters used (in other combinations but not together) in Shogi. A Knight move composed of two King moves, perhaps - not a bad description. | View [*] | |
| Steven Marche | Good | regardless of any author's spelling of a very simple Chinese Character, the standard Romanization of the horse character is 'ma'. Mao is simply another sound and simply is wrong. Unfortunately, problemists and game afficionados of the past were not linguists, but fortunately there are those of us who are in these modern times. Ma is Ma. Not Mao, or Mao Ze Dong's surname, which means hair or fur, btw. | View [*] | |
| Charles Gilman | None | Ma has many Chinese meanings depending on inflection. Inflected one way it means horse, inflected another way mother. Thereforte the confusion with the English 'ma' is entirely appropriate, especially as the English 'mare' means a female horse. There is little connection with the Pao, except that both pieces are used in Xiang Qi, and still less with the Vao. They differ from pieces used from India westwards in entirely different ways. Two small points: were 'Dawsons' books' written by one writer called Dawsons or several called Dawson? And why is cat the 'opposite of dog' when the two beasts have far more in common with each other than with a horse? | View [*] | |
Fergus Duniho  | None | T. R. Dawson was using the name Mao before the communist revolution in China that made Chairman Mao known to the world. Dawson was not using Pinyin, and for all I know, the Mao spelling was correct in the system of transliteration he was using. But when I put 'ma' in a Chinese Romanization Converter on the web, I did not find the 'mao' spelling for it in any system. Odds are that Dawson was very careless about using Chinese names. He made up the name Vao to rhyme with Pao, and he may have wanted to carry on the rhyming gimmick with Mao. To a westerner who doesn't know any better, the Mao spelling would suggest a closer relation with the name Pao for the Cannon. It would also distinguish it from the English word 'Ma,' which means mother. | Edit View [*] | |
| elenex | Excellent | the diagram really helps to show the movements of the 'cavalier', which is hard to describe with words. 'ma' is in fact teh correct term, in both mandarin and cantonese. 'mao' means cat (as in opposite of dog) in both dialects... | View [*] | |
| Number of ratings: 3, Average rating: Good, Number of comments: 7 | ||||
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