No spaces?

[BuddhaGeo]

This might sound like a weird question but I have noticed that on Wikipedia there are no spaces in between words.
Is it how Japanese always gets written? If yes, then isn't it hard to understand when a specific word comes to an end and another starts?

[AJBryant]

Yes, that's how it's done, and no, it's not really that difficult once you have a decent vocabulary.


Tony

[BuddhaGeo]

And would it be considered immature to write with spaces? Or is it ok for a beginner?

[Yudan Taiteki]

Yes and yes.

Youshouldbeabletoreadthiseventhoughithasnospaces.

You get used to it after a while.

[BuddhaGeo]

Okthanksverymuchforreplyingsofast.

[kayuu]

It's easier than it sounds because Japanese uses three alphabets and particles - when you identify certain kanji compounds or particles etc. you tend to notice where one word ends and another begins.

That's why they failed to Romanise Japanese, it was too hard to distinguish between words without Kanji. I've found that with Kanji, it's easy to both recognise words in a sentence and distinguish them from similar words. That's why I hate reading something written entirely in hiragana.

"In the Meiji era, some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system entirely and using rōmaji in its stead. ... Several Japanese texts were published entirely in rōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on, perhaps because of the large number of homophones in Japanese, which are pronounced similarly but written in different characters"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese

[Tspoonami]

kayuu wrote:
It's easier than it sounds because Japanese uses three alphabets and particles

This wording is ambiguous. Kayuu means something more along the lines of 'Japanese uses particles and three different scripts.'

(Just in case that had confused the OP...)

Now I'm wondering if my wording is equally vague.

[BuddhaGeo]

Nope, you were indefinitely fine at handling elaboration on this subject.

[hungryhotei]

Tspoonami wrote:

kayuu wrote:
It's easier than it sounds because Japanese uses three alphabets and particles

This wording is ambiguous. Kayuu means something more along the lines of 'Japanese uses particles and three different scripts.'

IWonderIfThatCreatesAnEffectSimilarToStartingEachWordWithACapitalLetter?

Since I know what that says now it's hard to judge whether it makes it easier to read or not.

[kayuu]

Explaining things unambiguously never was my strong point, but tspoonami's wording did make more sense

As for starting words with a capital letter, pretty much. You can easily tell where one word ends and another begins because the capitals aren't featured anywhere else in the sentence.

Most words in Japanese are followed by a hiragana particle/inflection denoting their purpose in a sentence. You can pick the particles/inflections out because they are written in a different script to most of the rest of the sentence (provided that the sentence isn't written only in hiragana) and therefore quite easily determine where each word begins and ends most of the time. Thus, it has the same effect as starting each word with a capital letter.

^^ I hope that wasn't so ambiguous

[Chris Hart]

hungryhotei wrote:

Tspoonami wrote:

kayuu wrote:
It's easier than it sounds because Japanese uses three alphabets and particles

This wording is ambiguous. Kayuu means something more along the lines of 'Japanese uses particles and three different scripts.'

IWonderIfThatCreatesAnEffectSimilarToStartingEachWordWithACapitalLetter?

Since I know what that says now it's hard to judge whether it makes it easier to read or not.

ThatWorksInEnglishExceptWhenYouUseATLAWithWordsAfterItAndASingleLetterWordBeforeIt.

[hungryhotei]

I spent a minute there trying to work out what ATLA could possibly mean.

[richvh]

What About AWMTTL (Acronyms With More Than Three Letters)?

[Chris Hart]

hungryhotei wrote:
I spent a minute there trying to work out what ATLA could possibly mean.

The trick is to pay attention to the whole sentence. It describes itself.
It applies equally to those, Mr. Vanhouten.

[chikara]

richvh wrote:
What About AWMTTL (Acronyms With More Than Three Letters)?

A subset of those is called AWFL's (Acronyms With Four Letters)

Please refer to my post of 14-09-2006 in this thread