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Chess in spanish4/9/2023 French players thought the double-forked piece looked like a fool’s cap, and started calling it “le fou”. ![]() It was usually a simple piece with a single or double forked top (probably representing an elephant’s tusks). The Bishop (“alfil” in Spanish) is “fou” (fool or jester) in French (old diagrams in French books often show the Bishop with a jester’s cap rather than a bishop’s mitre), “слон” (elephant) in Russian, and “Läufer” (runner) in German.īy 1200 or so, the original Indian war elephant had been simplified, stylized, and abstracted to unrecognizability in European chess sets. That explains the arab name of the Bishop, among other things. It may be relevant in this context before this becomes a EN-ES glossary on chess terms to point out that the game of chess came to Europe by way of the Arabs that conquered Spain: El Libro de los Juegos was a book commissioned by Alfonso X el Sabio (the Wise One, not bad as a moniker to be remembered by, is it?) that contains the earliest European treatise on chess, it was finished 1283. Stalemate is called rey ahogado (drowned king). The promotion is called coronar un peón (to crown a pawn), castling is enrocar, the capture en passant (“in passing”) is called capturar al paso. The King is el rey (evident), the Rook is la torre (the tower), the Knight is el caballo (the horse), the Pawn is el peón (also evident). ![]() At least not in Spain, I ignore whether there are different usages in South America. ![]() The use is indiscriminate, I believe, but some expressions require one or the other: Queen’s gambit, for instance, is gambito de dama, not gambito de reina. The Queen is refered to as la dama or la reina. The explanation given for the ethymology of the Bishop (el alfil) is the one I had read before, I guess it is true.
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