I'm planning on learning Japanese. One of the main things that's been confusing me so far is the apparent lack of spaces between written words in Japanese (or most Asian language) sentences. How do they tell when one word ends and the next one begins? Or am I just missing something? AsfarasIcantelltheirsentencesalllooklikethis. Isthathowtheyactuallyare?
In english, spaces are important otherwise they can combine with other words and make weird new sounds, not to mention, you don't know where one syllable ends
In Japanese, you always know when the syllable ends, even with hiragana, so reading really isn't a problem.
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Anonymous2007-12-20 14:26
That's why 1) kanji are useful, and 2) a good knowledge of grammar is important. Knowing most of the particles and grammatical constructions will allow you to figure out word boundaries in more confusing texts. Kanji are also very useful in demarcating words since words, if they contain any kanji, almost always start with it. Of course, there will probably be some longer set expressions written in hiragana that will confuse the heck out of you, but you can't do much about that except ask for help on those, or do Google searches for the intermediate segments.