とことん is just a hard to grasp word. I think it's fairly colloquial as well.

dtcamero I don't actually have a clue what these are: はおるか and ざるを得ない

Damn Rawtoast, that's expensive.

Zgarbas you should check out 高田渡, he's great.

tashippy Wrote:dtcamero I don't actually have a clue what these are: はおるか and ざるを得ない

I suppose the first は・おる・か with two particles and a humble 'to be', but I don't know when you'd use it.
It could also be 羽織るか ... 羽織る is a slightly but not terribly unusual word (in fiction books). It's another 'to wear' verb, specific to putting on a coat, robe, or mantle.

ざるを得ない however is a -very- useful phrase to know when you're reading, or if you're listening to people (or characters) who like to use those kinds of heavy older terms. The tanaka corpus example is illustrative enough,

Quote:そう考えざるを得ない。
I can not but think so.

classical negative conjugation of any verb phrase + を + negative of 'to obtain' = "cannot help but to ___" or "cannot avoid ___".

It's related obviously to やむを得ない which has a similar meaning - (noun phrase) + はやむを得ない = '(noun phrase) can't be avoided'.

はおろか is covered in Shin Kanzen Master N1 from memory. It's basically equivalent to the English expression "Not even A, let alone B", except the order is switched in Japanese and the emphasis is on not being able to do either. You can substitute ～はもちろん and it means pretty much the same thing.

From dictionary.goo.ne.jp:
（「…はおろか」「…もおろか」などの形で）言うまでもないことである。もちろん。「掃除は―、布団を上げたこともない」

Another example:
彼は敬語はおろか、簡単な日本語さえできない。

I thought both ざるを得ない　and おろか were both JLPT N2 grammar points? I'm almost certain, I could swear I studied both of them years ago before I took 2kyuu exam.

It seems the N1 takes for granted that you know ざるを得ない: I found a few instances in the vocab and reading sections of the 2011-2012 exams; also, one ざる without を得ない.

According to Tanos, ざるを得ない was N2 but おろか was N1 in the old JLPT.

dtcamero Wrote:Why don't we have some more of that, complicated Japanese that's actually practical... rather than はおるか and ざるを得ない...?

I've heard はおるか used in daily conversation plenty of times. Although I can't recall hearing it in daily conversation, I've heard ざるを得ない used in academic discussions, and I see it all the time when I read philosophy in Japanese.

Edit: today I found out that Adam Smith's famous concept of the invisible hand is called the 見えざる手. It's good that the JLPT tests such grammar considering that Japanese universities often require N1, or at least N2, certification.

[Zgarbas]

I distinctly recall seeing ざるを得ないin 金閣寺。

I have no recollection of はおろか being in the test and this conversation makes me wonder what else I might've missed ^^'.

For me the N2 equivalent of とこたん was 要するに which turned up a number of times! Worst part was I knew I'd learnt it before but just couldn't remember what it meant.

Took N2 in Nishinomiya, not too far from where I live/work now, Kobe. First JLPT experience. My proctor appeared to be having trouble reading the kanji on the test instructions. He must have just been super nervous, but he kept stuffing up and saying sorry. It was pretty awkward. o_O

It was more difficult than the 2 practice tests I bought and completed during the week leading up to the test. Especially the listening. I was getting 90% on the listening in the practice tests I took but know I did nooo-where near as well as that.

The only real preparation I did was read through Kanzen Master N2 grammar book and complete the exercises. I love the way this book explains the grammar and feel it's more beneficial for my own understanding of Japanese than for the test in particular. It felt like only 5% or less of the points covered in the book turn up specifically on the test...

I really just can't say how I've done. Can anyone remember when the results come out? It's a long wait if I recall...

Also, N1 takers out there... If I pass N2 by a good margin, is it reasonable to aim for N1 next December? Thoughts?

Totally reasonable, and why not the July N1?

Vempele Wrote:Totally reasonable, and why not the July N1?

Yes, the July N1 is definitely achievable. I advise going for it if you score above 120 and you can study at least 3 hours/day. To support my advice, I'll refer to my N2 and N1 scores, which are from tests taken six months apart.

I passed N2 in July 2012 with the following results:

130/180 Overall

39/60 Language Knowledge
Vocabulary: A
Grammar: B
31/60 Reading
60/60 Listening

I then took the N1 in December 2012 (6 months later) and obtained these results:

97/180 Overall

45/60 Language Knowledge
Vocabulary: B
Grammar: B
19/60 Reading
33/60 Listening

As you can see, I was only 3 points away from passing. If I had just answered one more question right, I could have passed. In my case, the N1 reading and listening were much harder compared to the N2. My N1 language knowledge score was actually better than my N2 score, which I think shows the strength of studying with Anki. However, my listening and reading scores almost dropped by half, even though I aced the N2 listening. If I had cut back on Anki and focused more on reading and listening, I would've most likely passed. At the time, I was probably studying 70% Anki and 30% native materials. It should have been more like 10-15% Anki and 85-90% native materials.

To the people above: are youse talking about waoruka (sp?) or waoroka or both?

Because it looks dtcamero made a typo and half of you did not notice it and start talking about waoruka and the other half of you also did not notice it and proceeded talking about oroka.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:To the people above: are youse talking about waoruka (sp?) or waoroka or both?

Everyone's talking about 'wa oroka'. My off-base answer above was because I didn't recognize the expression with the typo in it.
I've seen the expression a few times, though it's not perhaps the most common way to express that kind of sentiment.

@vileru: it's interesting that you got 75% from Language Knowledge even though you couldn't possibly have answered more than 66% correctly (the A/B/C grading is usually coarse enough to obfuscate the effect of the scaling so I have no idea how atypical this is). Any idea which kinds of questions you got wrong and which kinds you got right?

I took at least 4-5 practice tests beforehand, and so I clearly remember which questions gave me trouble. Here's the breakdown (refer to this page for examples of the types of questions I'm referring to):

Aced 問題１
Did well 問題２・３・６
Did poorly 問題４・５・７

vileru Wrote:Here's the breakdown (refer to this page for examples of the types of questions I'm referring to):

Or I could look them up in my downloaded copy of the 2012/12 test.

Thanks. So you probably got 16/25 on vocab and did better than expected on grammar (doing poorly on 15 out of 20 grammar questions is not how you get a good score, even if the other 5 (sentence scrambling) might be considered the most difficult).

Where did you download a copy of the 2012/12 test? Are you serious?　

EDIT: Ok, I just realized we are in 2013, my bad, nevermind. :lol:

Edit: ninja'd by edit.

Has anyone been able to get a copy of the Dec/2013 test yet?

youasuki Wrote:Has anyone been able to get a copy of the Dec/2013 test yet?

http://wenku.baidu.com/view/19d5dc92b071...cdc5a.html

Vempele Wrote:

youasuki Wrote:Has anyone been able to get a copy of the Dec/2013 test yet?

http://wenku.baidu.com/view/19d5dc92b071...cdc5a.html

Do you have to make an account to download them? It seems like it, but I can't read Chinese, only make guesses when the kanji looks like Japanese kanji...

Not only do you have to log in (the top one on http://www.bugmenot.com/view/wenku.baidu.com worked for me), it looks like you have to pay to download it.

Vempele Wrote:Not only do you have to log in (the top one on http://www.bugmenot.com/view/wenku.baidu.com worked for me), it looks like you have to pay to download it.

So, where did you find your copy to download? I'd kinda like to print these out for reference and to study from.

I didn't.

You could take screenshots and print those. The answers being laid out vertically kinda bloats it up, though, outside of the reading section.

Vempele Wrote:I didn't.

You could take screenshots and print those. The answers being laid out vertically kinda bloats it up, though, outside of the reading section.

Ah...
This might be a stupid question that could easily be answered by google, but do you know a site from which you can download past exams? And/or answers?

EDIT: Never mind, I did find a lot via google. Sometimes I'm just so lazy T_T

That was the site. They have multiple copies of most tests, most of which can be downloaded for free. For answers, check http://jp.hjenglish.com/ if the ones that came with the test seem wrong.