What about spaces?

[Pikalovermegapuff]

How do the Japanese manage to read without spaces? I can barely do it in English, never mind Japanese...

[Gakusha]

They can read without spaces because the kanji divide up the words.

[Pikalovermegapuff]

I didn't know that... thanks!

[Mukade]

Gakusha wrote:
They can read without spaces because the kanji divide up the words.

Actually, the Japanese have no problem reading a text written entirely in kana without spaces. For a native speaker, they know the words and the grammar well enough to make the distinction without even thinking about it.

Imeanthinkaboutit. EveninEnglishitdoesn'ttakemuchforanativespeakertoreadasentencewithoutspacesbecauseweknowthewordsandthegrammarsowell...

:p

[kempokatt]

youarecorrectsir...

Dad yuo also knouw that peeple can reed vary will if wurds ar misplled?

[spin13]

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn barin deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe.
Fcuknig amzanig huh?

Latin didn't use spaces either and the Roman alphabet was obviously legible in such a context. And us modern English speakers even have a few extra letters to help us distinguish words: how many vowels in the Latin word for 'slave', "servvs?"

-Eric

[njt]

spin13 wrote:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn barin deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe.
Fcuknig amzanig huh?

Latin didn't use spaces either and the Roman alphabet was obviously legible in such a context. And us modern English speakers even have a few extra letters to help us distinguish words: how many vowels in the Latin word for 'slave', "servvs?"

-Eric

ah that brings back memories~ days when I studied latin in my class. The first time I saw how it was all in one big blob of letters I freaked, but after a few classes of having to read it, it wasn't too bad

and having latin as a base before hitting Japanese, I think, made it easier~ since now, I prefer kanji and kana without spaces (er well always did.. but yeah)
it makes it a whole lot easier to have it just there for you in a nice neat package .

[Gakusha]

I never write Japanese with spaces for fear I'll become too dependent on them. For me, reading a sentence entirely in kana isn't even that hard, because most sentences in kana are not very long anyway.

[Harisenbon]

Mukade wrote:
Actually, the Japanese have no problem reading a text written entirely in kana without spaces. For a native speaker, they know the words and the grammar well enough to make the distinction without even thinking about it.

Well, can read and having no problem are two completely different things. Even for native speakers reading things in all kana can get kind of tiring. When reading japanese, you generally skip over a lot of the kana and go straight to the kanji to get the meaning of a sentence, just like in English you don:t read every single letter, but only the front and back of a word (as in the example above).