Terms

Here’s a quick list of some karuta terminology in both English and Romaji (i.e. Japanese, but written in English characters), in case it helps you understand any resources you find!

Common Terminology:

Reading Cards | Yomi-fuda – the cards used to read the poems for a match. This contains the full poem.

Playing Cards | Tori-fuda – cards that only contain the 2nd half of the poem, and are actually present on the playing field. They can be taken by either player.

Since they only have the 2nd half of the poem written on them, it is strongly recommended (to say the least) that you know the first half of the poem that each playing card, or tori-fuda, corresponds to.

Dead Cards | Kara-fuda – cards that only contain the 2nd half of the poem, but are not on the playing field. While these are not in play, the corresponding “reading card” may still be read, and touching a card on the playing field when the read card is one of these “dead cards” results in a foul.

“Unique Syllable” | Kimariji – the “deciding syllable” that allows you to determine which poem is being read. For instance, there are two poems that both with “tsu”, which then branch off into either “tsuku” or “tsuki”, and you must first wait to hear which word it is before touching a card—unless you don’t mind guessing and being wrong.

Unique syllables/kimariji are essential to becoming faster at taking cards, such that many people will only memorize the corresponding kimariji to a poem, not the entire poem, since anything after the kimariji is not essential to determining which card is being read by the reader.

Friend Cards | Tomo-fuda – cards with common unique syllables. Knowing the tomo-fuda of every card is an essential element of play, as you must often distinguish between them in order to take cards quickly. (For instance, yura and yuu both start with “yu”, so they are tomo-fuda).

“Foul” | Otetsuki – an action that results in a penalty. Fouls most commonly refer to touching a side of the field/”territory” that does not contain the recited card. Committing a foul, or otetsuki, results in the opponent sending you one of their cards, which in turn results in a net point differential of “2”—since they lost 1 card and you yourself gained 1 card, you are now 2 cards more behind than what you just were.

You can also commit a “double foul” by touching both sides of the playing field when the recited card is a dead card. There are various more specifics to fouls beyond this, but in short, making a mistake and touching cards you are not allowed to is a foul, or otetsuki, and results in a penalty.

Other Terminology:

“Sweeping” | Fuda-oshi – typically refers to a technique in which the read card is “swept” away off the playing field by “pushing” the row of cards it’s in, rather than simply tapping/pressing a specific card.

“Empty Swing” | Kara-buri – a seemingly lesser-used term that refers to swings (movements to take a card) that do not actually touch a card. This is usually on purpose, e.g. to avoid touching a card when a dead card is read, but can also happen accidentally, such as when a player attempts to touch a card but misses due to inaccuracy.

“Return Touch” | Modorite – to my knowledge, does not have a good, standard English name, but a modorite, or “return touch”, is a motion where, after moving towards the opponent’s field, the player returns back to defend a card on their side. One example situation of this may be covering an opponent’s long-syllable card, then defending the friend card/tomo-fuda of it on their side.

“Cross Hand” | Watarite – a motion where two cards on different sides of a playing field are quickly taken one after another. Called as such because the player “crosses over” from one card to another, usually because a pair of friend cards are present on one side, and it is not clear which of the cards will be read yet, but it is clear that one of them is it. (For instance, if shino and shira are both on the opponent’s side, but one is on the left and one is on the right, you could use a cross hand from shino to shira, or shira to shino.)

“My Territory” | Ji-jin – as the name implies, your half of the playing field.

“Enemy Territory” | Teki-jin, Aite-jin – also as the name implies, the opponents’ half of the playing field.

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You can find some additional terminology/alternate explanations in this reddit post here.