Hi all, I'm a newbie here hoping to take N1 in December 2012. I passed the old 2級 donkeys years ago but never got round to taking 1級 because every time I looked at past papers the 漢字 freaked me out. However, I've now decided to get stuck in and start learning all the 常用漢字 I've never studied properly. I'm basically working my way through Spahn and Hadamitzky's The Kanji Dictionary. Things are going well but there is something I'd like to ask veterans of 1級/N1.
There are many 漢字 that I feel comfortable with, ie I know what they mean, can read them in kun yomi and on yomi, have never had a problem with, etc but some of these same 漢字 also have readings which seem to be very old and barely ever used by native speakers. As you're expected to know all the 常用漢字 for the test they are fair game I suppose but I don't want to increase my already large workload unnecessarily if possible.
There are plenty of characters like 妄 used in 妄りに (みだりに) which appear in my dictionary but in example sentences are written in hiragana, implying they are not commonly used by native speakers and that you wouldn't expect to test a foreigner on it.
Take for example 克. I knew this character already from 克服 but I have never seen it as 克く (よく, well) or 克つ (かつ, conquer) as it is listed by Spahn and Hadamitzky. It doesn't even come up on a list of readings on my browser when I enter よく and is not in my Obunsha Comprehensive Jap-Eng Dictionary. I'm guessing most Japanese would know the reading if shown it but never use it themselves when writing or typing. My question is this : Is this the kind of thing that could appear in the test or would they not bother with it bearing in mind it is seldom used, certainly in modern Japanese? Has anyone taken the test recently and been stumped by obscure readings that Japanese people might not know?
Any responses much appreciated.
PS Apologies to anyone who thinks this has already been covered in
http://www.jlptstudy.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=802
That thread is over three years old and what with the changes to JLPT in 2010 I thought I'd take a punt. |
