how con you tell where a word ends?

[Casey09]

I have a Japanese pen pal and she writes me letters but I'm having alot of trouble telling where the words end and begin. Can you please help me?

[ruisu81]

When I see a bunch of hiragana strung together, I have the same problem sometimes. I think this will go away as we learn more words and sentence patterns...

Why don't you post what's confusing you?

[Mike Cash]

Ask your friend to put spaces in the letter. It isn't normal practice, but it would be the kind and helpful thing for her to do and I feel sure she would cooperate.

[Casey09]

ok she's younger so writes mostly in hiragana this is what some of it looks like.
わたしのじこしょうかいをします。 and it has more and i can read it. it takes me a while to figure out where it ends and begins.

[Hatori]

Casey09 wrote:
I have a Japanese pen pal and she writes me letters but I'm having alot of trouble telling where the words end and begin. Can you please help me?

I've never had the guts to ask such a simple, but somewhat irritating question.

[Casey09]

thank you I will suggest that she do that

[ruisu81]

Hmm...I guess if she is purposely avoiding kanji you could type what she writes and let the IME convert it to kanji. Here's how the IME interprets it:
私の自己紹介をします

JDICT is a beginner friendly dictionary I like. You can enter unknown kanji in there to see what it may mean.

Often の、(and always I guess) を、and many other particles indicate the end of a word.

[Casey09]

I never thought of using the IME thanks

[CajunCoder]

It might be better to ask her to use kanji instead. At you're level, you probably need to look up words a lot anyway. Kanji will help you tell where words start/end, and you'll get good reading practice.

As you become more familiar with grammar and your vocabulary grows you won't have much of a problem with recognizing where words begin/end.

[Yudan Taiteki]

I agree with CC - if your Japanese is at the level where you have to look up the majority of the words in a dictionary to read the e-mail, just have her use kanji. It will be easier for you to make the words out and look them up.

[richvh]

Particularly if the messages are email. Just cut and paste into WWWJDIC (or using thunderbird, install and activate rikaichan.)

It might be different if the letters come by snail mail. But even then, looking up kanji (by radicals, skip or whatever) is still usually quicker and cheaper in an online (WWWJDIC) or offline (JWPce, Wakan, IME pad) dictionary than in a kanji dictionary.

[ruisu81]

I think the reason it's in hiragana is because the penpal is a child and doesn't know enough kanji yet.

[Yudan Taiteki]

It's probably the reverse -- I seriously doubt the OP's penpal is a 6 year old child.

[tanuki]

It might be different if the letters come by snail mail. But even then, looking up kanji (by radicals, skip or whatever) is still usually quicker and cheaper in an online (WWWJDIC) or offline (JWPce, Wakan, IME pad) dictionary than in a kanji dictionary.

Or you could ask her to write in kanji with furigana. Looking them up would be easy as pie.

[Infidel]

Yea, Japanese assume that since kana makes it easier for children to read that it makes it easier for foreigners to read as well. Just ask the person to write normally so you can look up the words easier and tell where the words end.