n is for knight
when i first saw chess notation, i assumed k was for knight. that would make sense because knight starts with k … or does it?
the key to this mystery is to realize that the piece i thought was a knight is not a knight at all. i think if u look closely u will notice that it is a horse, not a human person with armor and stuff. knights ride horses sometimes tho so i can understand the confusion.
then i learned that in chess notation, the horse is n. this means it is a night, not a knight. finally it all makes sense!
as we know, many chess words come from other languages. checkmate for example. it was originally persian and people kept being like oh, this sounds kind of like these other words, lets just use those instead.
in the same way, it appears obvious that night is a borrowed word from horse language:
“neigh.”
neigh is almost the same word as night, and night sounds like knight.
and that is why we call the horse a knight to this day.
is this what really happened? no one knows. history is lost to history. but now u will never forget that in chess notation knight is n, and more importantly, i will remember it too.
the end.
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(as always i will end with adding the relevant lesson to my chess goal list)
- remember the king can take pieces - im getting pretty good at this now but i did mess it up yesterday
- remember to move the king two spaces to castle - i havent even made this mistake again!
- remember which side is which so i know which way the pawns go
- see all the pieces at the same time
- get fluent in chess notation
p.s. did u know theres a way to practice chess notations on chess dot com? it is under "... more" and then "vision". im gonna be fluent in no time! thanks for reading my blog!
