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The T-Files

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Sun, 07 Dec 2003

Japanese Language Proficiency Test

The JLPT is the official Japanese language test. The exams are conducted only once a year on the first Sunday in December with identical questions world-wide (a good example of Japanese organizational perfection). There are four levels, the highest level (Level One) is required to enroll as a regular student in Japanese universities. Level Two certifies a level of competence that can be included as Business Japanese in a professional resume. The gap to Level Three (which is not all that useful) is enormous and separates real language students from people who just managed to pick up a few phrases. Level Four acts as an entry level to give some motivation for beginning students (especially from Western countries, Asians usually go straight for Level One).

Level 1: The examinee has mastered grammar to a high level, knows around 2,000 kanji and 10,000 words, and has an integrated command of the language sufficient for life in Japanese society.
Level 2: The examinee has mastered grammar to a relatively high level, knows around 1,000 kanji and 6,000 words, and has the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature.
Level 3: The examinee has mastered grammar to a limited level, knows around 300 kanji and 1,500 words, has the ability to take part in everyday conversation and read and write simple sentences.
Level 4: The examinee has mastered the basic elements of grammar, knows around 100 kanji and 800 words, has the ability to engage in simple conversation and read and write short, simple sentences.

I did Level Three last December, and Level Four the year before. I am staying at home today. Back in June, my teacher shared my assessment that it would be impossible to reach Level Two at my current rate of progress with the Japanese language (I sometimes think I am already forgetting more than I am learning).

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TAL: Tales of Metal and Petals

<html xmlns:tal="http://purl.org/petal/1.0/">
    <body>
    This is the variable 'my_var' : 
    <span tal:replace="my_var">Hola, Mundo!</span>.
    </body>
</html>

In my never-ending quest for the ultimate templating system, I stumbled upon Petal, which is a Perl implementation of large parts of TAL, TALES and METAL, which are used by the Python-powered Zope web application server. It seems to be limited to producing XML output (including XHTML), so in order to use it one would have to clean up his HTML (not a bad idea anyway). But it has all the features I am missing in HTML::Template, such as accessing complex data structures, and integrating better with WYSIWYG editors. The main idea is that it does not use any special tags, but is completely controlled by attributes assigned to existing tags. I have seen (and wanted) that before, but Petal seems much more mature than for example HTML::Seamstress.

[/tech] permanent link