Terminologies

You do not need to speak Japanese to start at Samurai Karate! To begin with, our friendly instructors use well developed communication techniques and plain English to help you learn. As you progress, you will be introduced to basic Japanese Karate terminology in the form of counting, response and technique names.

Here’s some basic terminology to get you started:

OSU (pronounced ‘oss’ or ‘o-soo’)
Acknowledgement or respectful utterance. For example, an instructor completes an instruction to the class and ends with OSU. The practitioners all respond with OSU to indicate agreement, acknowledgment and understanding.

COUNTING

  1. Ichi (ee-chee)
  2. Ni (nee)
  3. San (sahn)
  4. Yon (yohn)
  5. Go (goh)
  6. Roku (rokh-oo)
  7. Nana (nah-nah)
  8. Hachi (hah-chee)
  9. Kyu (kyoo)
  10. Ju (joo)
Scroll to top