What does TATE really mean??

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doctorx0079
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What does TATE really mean??

Post by doctorx0079 »

Okay, so what do the words TATE and YOKO really mean?? Are they acronyms?? Should they be all-caps or not?? And how should those words be pronounced?? I mean is TATE pronounced like tah-tay or like Tater Tots??
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Re: What does TATE really mean??

Post by Ghegs »

doctorx0079 wrote:Okay, so what do the words TATE and YOKO really mean?? Are they acronyms?? Should they be all-caps or not?? And how should those words be pronounced?? I mean is TATE pronounced like tah-tay or like Tater Tots??
We've had a few threads about this, but: they're simply japanese words. "Tate" means "vertical" and "yoko" stands for "horizontal". I'm sure GaijinPunch or somebody else can come up with the kanji. Simple as that. Whether they're written in all-caps or not makes no difference. It's pronounced "tah-tay".
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Post by BulletMagnet »

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Post by gameoverDude »

Another meaning for Tate is "Get up!". In KOF'97, Joe Higashi smacks his fists together after KOing the opponent, then tells them to "Tate".
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Post by Blade »

BulletMagnet, I found a name for this term:

Bullet Clearing
What do you call it when all the bullets onscreen disappear for a few seconds after your ship is destroyed? This also seems to happen whenever you destroy a boss at the end of a stage.
It also happens whenever most screen-filling bombs are dropped, or when your ship is transitioning to another part of a stage, like, say, when you're firing your ships guns at full auto and the game stops you from firing to zoom off to the next stage, the bullets will do their "collision" animation when they collide with the ship or a solid object or just straight up disappear.
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Post by greg »

"Yoko" means "side." The city Yokohama means "side of the beach/beside the beach". You're putting your TV on its side.
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Post by PaCrappa »

I've been of the opinion for a few years now that TATE really means, "I'm too lazy to type or say 'vertical' plus I want to sound extra Japanesey (because Japan is better) for the internet and all of my 'sweet otaku friends' that think it's awesome to use a Japanese word when we have a perfectly good English one that means the same thing".

Maybe I'm jaded? I also don't use the term "shmup". Mostly because "shooter" (an actual word that adequately describes what takes place in that sort of game) has always been there for me.

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Post by GateofThunderforceIII »

Pa, if you were serious about not using the term shmup, then I agree with you. Plus, I hate to say, shmup sounds stupid. Besides, we need to reclaim the word shooter from all these American LAMERS (and probably everyone else) who keep calling FPSs "shooters." But that would probably be impossible.
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Post by iatneH »

Especially when they say "an arcade-style shooter like TimeSplitters". I don't think these guys have ever been to an arcade before.
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Post by mannerbot »

gameoverDude wrote:Another meaning for Tate is "Get up!". In KOF'97, Joe Higashi smacks his fists together after KOing the opponent, then tells them to "Tate".
That would be "tatte."
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Post by Pixel_Outlaw »

Simple. TATES are what cows have that shot milk all over the place. :P
Like in the anime cow shooter Shinuki no Kesin.
Some of the best shmups don't actually end in a vowel.
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Post by superhitachi4 »

PaCrappa wrote:I've been of the opinion for a few years now that TATE really means, "I'm too lazy to type or say 'vertical' plus I want to sound extra Japanesey (because Japan is better) for the internet and all of my 'sweet otaku friends' that think it's awesome to use a Japanese word when we have a perfectly good English one that means the same thing".

Maybe I'm jaded? I also don't use the term "shmup". Mostly because "shooter" (an actual word that adequately describes what takes place in that sort of game) has always been there for me.
Haha so true. I sometimes say "tate" (I KNOW it's pronounced "tah-tay", and have known forever...but I purposely say "tayte" because that at least *sounds like "rotate"). Anyway yeah, I prefer "vertical", and "horizontal" myself, but eh. Tate, and Yoko seems to be the way of shooters. Something people have to deal with I guess. :(
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Post by Ko.oS »

I always mispronounce taito, gradius, and raiden; and i know im not the only one. BTW, over here FPS = ego-shooter [/useless fact of the day]
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Post by jiji »

PaCrappa wrote:I've been of the opinion for a few years now that TATE really means, "I'm too lazy to type or say 'vertical' plus I want to sound extra Japanesey (because Japan is better) for the internet and all of my 'sweet otaku friends' that think it's awesome to use a Japanese word when we have a perfectly good English one that means the same thing".
I doubt that has much at all to do with it. The terms are in common use because they're the terms that people see in the games' menus, by and large. "Tate" and "yoko" have always seemed like more exact terms to me, given the context, than "horizontal" and "vertical," besides. If you want to replace them with equally precise English terms, "portrait" and "landscape" are there for you. I wouldn't mind seeing the latter two come into more common use in this context, because it would leave a few less heads being scratched, but the Japanese terms are already common and well-understood.
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Post by Dylan1CC »

Wow, forgot about BM's shmup glossary/dictionary. Nice work, I need to bookmark that one.
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Post by it290 »

Yeah, there are plenty of vertical games that don't use a tate style display.
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Post by GaijinPunch »

mannerbot is right. Don't confuse tatsu/tatte with tate. tatsu (to stand).
Tate, which for some reason isn't in goo, simply means vertical, and is not game lingo. It's a normal word.

As for Pa's take on it, I've never thought vertical and tate were interchangeable. Gigawing 2, Tatsujin, Radiant Silvergun are all vertical games. They play on a yoko screen though.
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Post by GaijinPunch »

mannerbot is right. Don't confuse tatsu/tatte with tate. tatsu (to stand).
Tate, which for some reason isn't in goo, simply means vertical, and is not game lingo. It's a normal word.

As for Pa's take on it, I've never thought vertical and tate were interchangeable. Gigawing 2, Tatsujin, Radiant Silvergun are all vertical games. They play on a yoko screen though
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Post by Moogs »

I thought "tate" and "yoko" originally referred to writing Japanese either vertically or horizontally...

I could be wrong, though.
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Post by iatneH »

GaijinPunch wrote:As for Pa's take on it, I've never thought vertical and tate were interchangeable. Gigawing 2, Tatsujin, Radiant Silvergun are all vertical games. They play on a yoko screen though
I thought Tatsujin is tate, at least the arcade version is... Just the MD and PCE versions (and I'm guessing other versions too if they exist) got yoko-fied since tilting televisions wasn't as popular back then..
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Post by GaijinPunch »

Moogs wrote:I thought "tate" and "yoko" originally referred to writing Japanese either vertically or horizontally...
"originally".... who knows? That's a long time ago. A very common phrase is "yoko ni naru". (Become horizontal = lay down).

And yeah, forgot about the arcade version of Tatsujin as I've not played it much. You get the idea though. :)
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Post by BulletMagnet »

Blade wrote:BulletMagnet, I found a name for this term:

Bullet Clearing
Hmm, sounds plausible enough, I'll add it next update. :) Yeesh, I really need a new thread for that thing...
PaCrappa wrote:I've been of the opinion for a few years now that TATE really means, "I'm too lazy to type or say 'vertical'...
In my case that's pretty much it, "sounding Japanese" has nothing to do with it, it's just easier to type. :mrgreen:
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Post by EOJ »

Here's some comments from my perspective as a linguist:

It is clear that tate 'vertical' and tatu 'stand' are historically related, descending from the same root tat-, which originally had a meaning of 'rise' or 'stand'. For example, in Old Japanese poetry they wrote things like tat-o tuku rise-ATTRIBUTIVE moon "rising moon". The earliest attestation of tate in Japanese texts I could find (in a quick search through some of my Old Japanese dictionaries) is from the Manyou'shuu poem #1512 (circa 6th-7th century CE). In addition to a meaning of 'vertical space', it also meant 'distance'. yoko is also found early on in the Manyou'shuu (for example poem #4132), and interestingly is derived from the same yok- root as found in yokeru 'avoid'.

As for the argument that we already have a word for 'vertical' in English, and hence the term tate should be abolished, I think those who really believe this are overlooking some basic things. All languages borrow words (and ironically, English has borrowed more words than most languages), and there are different social motivations for these borrowings. Languages can borrow and replace a word as basic as 'stone' (cf. the Romans replacing their native lapis with the borrowed Greek word petra), so why is it so strange (or wrong) to have another word for a decidedly less basic word such as vertical, used only in a very specific sociocultural context with a specific meaning and usage (i.e. talking specifically about the screen orientation of shmups with those who play said games)? Obviously the initial motivation for the borrowing of the Japanese term tate into English stems from the fact that the vast number of vertically-oriented (as in your monitor/TV is vertical, not just the movement) shmups are from Japan, and this is the term used in Japanese to refer to vertically-oriented monitors. But the underlying motivation for the usage of the term in English (and the source of the term's prominence today) is that tate refers specifically to the orientation of the screen, not the movement on that screen. For example, when we say "I'm going to play in tate mode", or "yoko mode sucks", we can see that only the former refers to the vertical-orientation of the monitor, even though BOTH modes involve vertical movement. English lacks a word with this specific meaning, and before the importation of tate this idea could only be expressed in a clumsy phrase like "vertically-oriented monitor", or "vertically-rotated monitor". So, this gap in the English lexicon was wanting to be filled, and tate was the term which came along to fill it. The advantage of having tate and yoko in addition to vert and hori is further strengthened when we see shmups like RSG and Gigawing (vertical movement on a horizontally-oriented monitor), as it allows us to neatly and unambiguously classify these as distinct from traditional vertically-scrolling vertically-oriented monitor (see, isn't that clumsy?) shmups. So, we could have yoko verts (like RSG), tate verts (like Ibara, Ikaruga, and tons of others), and horis (like Border Down, Hyper Duel, and many others). A bit simpler, don't you think? And of course you can say you play tate verts in yoko and still maintain the same terminological clarity and economy. I don't believe there are any tate horis, so yoko hori would be redundant and could be reduced to just hori for simplicity. Just an idea. And finally, the integration of tate and yoko into the language of those who play these games is further strengthened by the grammaticalisation processes these words have undergone, for example taking on verbal forms via conversion, as in phrases I've read by posters on these forums such as "I'm going to tate my monitor tonight", and "the screen has become yoko-fied".

As for those who don't use 'shmup' because we already have 'shooter', well the obvious advantage of 'shmup' is that it is more specific than 'shooter' (which can have many meanings depending on the context).
In the end, one of them will win out, and right now 'shmup' is clearly in the lead. It always amazes me how resistant people are to new words.
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Post by Zach Keene »

twe wrote:I don't believe there are any tate horis
Scramble.
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Post by EOJ »

Thanks for the info Zach. :D
I guess tate hori could be used then.
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Post by Neon »

PaCrappa wrote:I've been of the opinion for a few years now that TATE really means, "I'm too lazy to type or say 'vertical' plus I want to sound extra Japanesey (because Japan is better) for the internet and all of my 'sweet otaku friends' that think it's awesome to use a Japanese word when we have a perfectly good English one that means the same thing".

Maybe I'm jaded? I also don't use the term "shmup". Mostly because "shooter" (an actual word that adequately describes what takes place in that sort of game) has always been there for me.

Pa
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Post by howmuchkeefe »

Well done, twe!
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Post by captain ahar »

anyone seen the commercial where the guy "jim-ifies" his tv? that gave me a good long laugh. :lol:

...he's lying on his couch watching tv on a tate'd set...
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Post by Kiken »

twe wrote:I don't believe there are any tate horis...
The unplayable cell phone version of Progear.
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Post by captain ahar »

Kiken wrote:
twe wrote:I don't believe there are any tate horis...
The unplayable cell phone version of Progear.
haha, and also there's Scramble (and Super Cobra, as long as i've already gone there)
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