Last weekend, third-year high school students took their stressful two-day standardized university entrance exams. These exams will decide whether they can enter their university of choice next spring.
However, some weren’t too pleased with the tricky English comprehension test. They needed to know the difference between British and American English when counting floors.
The National Center for University Entrance Examinations does warn all the test-takers that in addition to commonly taught American English, they may use British English in the test questions because they deem it essential that students understand the diversity of vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation used in international settings.
Too wicked
共通テスト、イギリス英語出してくるのは流石に鬼畜すぎ
“To use British-English on the common test is too wicked”
US vs UK Floors
わからない
の
に
アメリカは日本と同じく
1階→2階→……
イギリスは
グランドフロアー→1階→2階→…
つまり、アメリカ日本にとっての2階はイギリスにとっての1階
“For those who don’t know:
America is like Japan
1st floor -> 2nd floor ->
In England:
Ground floor -> 1st floor -> 2nd floor ->
In other words, the second floor for the US and Japan is the first floor in the UK.”
The Japanese counter for building floors
In Japanese, you combine numbers with a counter, a single-kanji character, to count things—people (人), cars (台), long and thin objects (本), flat and thin objects (枚) and so on. In total, the Japanese language has about 500 counters, but not all of them are commonly used. Let’s have a quick look at the counter for building floors: 階.
Note that ３階 can be read さんかい or さんがい. The latter being more frequent.
Floor numeral Japanese Romaji 1 一階 ikkai 2 二階 nikai 3 三階 sankai, sangai 4 四階 yonkai 5 五階 gokai 6 六階 rokkai 7 七階 nanakai 8 八階 hakkai 9 九階 kyuukai 10 十階 jyuukai
Vocabulary
Japanese Romaji English 共通テスト kyoutsuu tesuto Unified university entrance exams イギリス英語 igirisu eigo British English 流石に sasuga ni As expected, naturally 鬼畜 kichiku Savage, brutal, wicked 為に tame ni For 同じく onajiku Likewise つまり tsumari In other words
