As karate is a Japanese art, techniques, stances, etc are referred to by their Japanese names. This is similar to the way in which musical terms are often referred to in Italian and dance terms in French. There is however a marked advantage to this. Becoming familiar with Japanese terminology enables you to travel to a karate club anywhere in the world and train with the minimum of linguistic barriers.

The following is a list of the more commonly used Japanese terms and their English equivalents.