Comments on: More vocab than you need

By: R

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:29:58 +0000

I could be wrong, but for the case of “マスター” the person in question can also simply be the bartender, making the meaning of “master” a bit more difficult for a native speaker to discern. The JLPT likes to test katakana words like ベテラン that can easily be confused with the meaning a native speaker might guess (war veteran). That said, there are some katakana words that are really obvious to English speakers on the test as well.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:53:20 +0000

Krusha’s comment is like saying “Then I realized that Japan wasn’t the only country in the world.”

By: Harvey

Harvey — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:03:05 +0000

I took the test in DC, and it was mostly Americans.

The breakdown of participants totally depends on where geographically you are taking the exam.

Of course if you take the test in Japan, Asia is much closer than “the West”, there are vastly higher numbers of Asians living in Japan than Westerners, so there are going to be more Asians sitting for the exam.

I’m sure that there are many more Asians who take the exam around the world than Westerns as well.

Don’t hate on me man! Where’s the love.

The advanced Japanese program at IUC is mostly Americans. Most other language schools in Japan are mostly Asian.

Enough of that for now!

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:57:33 +0000

Here at my school in Japan it’s mostly Koreans and Chinese. We actually did a reading lesson recently about English loan words and it was the first time I felt I had a leg-up over them.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:33:44 +0000

I don’t think there is any test that isn’t criticized. No one likes the SATs. No one likes GREs.

By the way, if you played final fantasy tactics, you’d know that bar-keep is マスター! And my wife told me gaming was a waste of time! Boy is she wrong!