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Why JLPT N2 learners mix up 思い切り (おもいきり, “with all one's strength (heart), resignation, resolution”) and ええと (ええと, “let me see, well, er....”).
Both start with vowel sounds and involve a rhythmic pause. The 'o' in 思い切り and 'e' in ええと are both sentence-starting vowels that can be confused when a learner is processing the beginning of an utterance.
On JLPT N2, this pair shows up as a vocabulary meaning question. You see one word and pick its English equivalent from four options — one of which will be the other word in this pair, chosen as a distractor precisely because of the overlap.
Reading the explanation is step one. Targeted practice is what actually moves a confusion pair out of your weak list. Free, no signup needed to try.
Practice N2 confusion pairsSpot a mistake in this explanation? Email us. Explanations are AI-generated and human-reviewed; corrections welcome.