21149
I may not know very much Japanese, but I still want to practice reading the
language, to help learn hiragana, katakana, and kanji. However, since the
Japanese do not use spaces to separate words, I am clueless as to how to
identify the words, how can they tell?
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2015-01-03T17:05:39.117
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2022-10-31T16:50:53.147
2022-10-31T16:50:53.147
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question
grammar
How does someone know when one word ends and the next one starts?
Several answers can be given for that question:

The words are somehow separated by kanji. All the languages that used kanji
and moved to an alphabet (Korean and Vietnamese) introduced spaces when they
dropped kanji. So when you read a sentence, the kanji will give you the
meanings (not functional meaning such as tense, pronouns, but names, verbs,
nouns), and you brain will photograph the functional words/endings, so when
reading you'll alternate between kanji and functional words/endings.

To make it easier, you can use Rikaichan to lookup words. Research by Kudo
Taku has shown that greedily consuming tokens has a success rate of 90% in
parsing input (take the longest word that is available, that is usually what's
correct). His research also yielded a tool to raw tool to separate Japanese
phrases into grammatical chunks just based on surface forms (tiny segmenter:
<http://www.chasen.org/~taku/software/TinySegmenter/>), and a full fledged
grammatical parser (see chasen and kuromoji).
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2015-01-03T18:03:16.517
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2015-01-03T18:03:16.517
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answer
# Yousimplyconsiderwhichparsingmakesanysense.

When you can't use kanji, spaces are often inserted to reduce the possible
combinations and make reading more comfortable.

Done in many children's fairy tales...

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oBj9J.png)

> 「わたし、ポコくんに どうしてもあってみたくて、ここにきたの」
>
> キコちゃんは なきながら はなしました。
>
> 「わざわざ たぬきにぼけて ぼくに あいにきてくれたんだね！
>
> ぼく、ねがいごとが かなったよ！
>
> だって いっしょにあそべるともだちが、できたんだもの！」

Or in many of the early video games...

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zO5ft.jpg)

Note that every group of words - every idea - is separated by spaces or
commas, and usually not much longer than 5-10 kana. This limits the possible
interpretations without requiring too much context.

Take the sentence `おしろもせんりょうされておおぜいのひとがころされたわ` as an example. I'm having a
hard time coming up with any other possible reading here...
`お尻も善用され、手を押せ、夷の人が殺された環`... nuh, it doesn't work - partly because it uses many
non-on-reading-chinese-foreign-compounds.

So it's possible to split this long string correctly. But just like we can
tell at one glance how many trees there are to the top right in the second
image above (4), we can't (at least I can't) tell - at a glance - how many
stars there are in the first picture, also above (and no, I'm not ~~spoiling
the answer~~ doing the work).

As I was saying, it's much easier to take a quick look at space-separated
kana-strings and split it into words than parsing にわにわにわにわとりがいる or とおおおおおおお.
`にわ にわ にわ にわとりがいる` and `とおおお お おおおお` let you waste your brain power on the
inner values, not the looks. (Take a cheat look further down for the kanjified
version.)

* * *

In fact, just using a few simple kanji makes it look a lot more pleasing.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FwkH.jpg)

Just imagine the last sentence as きにならなかったひとですね... Hieroglyphic kanji (鑾) look
quite a bit different (or in fact don't look at all when they're on the verge
of becoming black holes in tiny font sizes) - visually - than the wobbly
hiragana (ゑ), which we perceive as different from blocky katakana (ヰ), which
in turn look different from kanji (嘯) as well.

We've only got (contrary to some people's beliefs) - as opposed to three on
Japanese - only two, instead of one, set of letters in English. But that
should suffice to illustrate the difference. Try to read this sentence:

> primaryerythromelalgiaisclassifiedaseitherfamilialorsporadic,withthefamilial
> forminheritedinanautosomaldominantmanner

Sure, you _can_ read it, but let's try to use "kanji" now:

> primaryERYTHROMELALGIAisCLASSIFIEDaseitherFAMILIALorSPORADIC,withtheFAMILIAL
> formINHERITEDinanAUTOSOMALDOMINANTmanner.

And let's not forget Japanese use full and like programmers full-width
characters. Which makes parsing at least for me even easier:

```

    primaryERYTHROMELALGIAisCLASSIFIEDaseitherFAMILIALorSPORADIC,withtheFAMILIAL formINHERITEDinanAUTOSOMALDOMINANTmanner.
    
```

We replaced nouns and Latin/Greek/French-based words with capitals, and it
gets much easier to read. And Japanese gives you one more script.

* * *

We lots and many kanji, spaces apparently become superfluid - proceed to flow
away - and thus superfluous.

Done when you discover your IME can spit out all those funny cryptic scribbles
with only one pressed space:

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcl3C.jpg)

Never mind all those used-by-native-speakers non-general-use kanjis
(俯瞰【ふかん】・彷徨【さまよ】う・詩【うた】)they (textbooks) tell you that they (funny scribbles)
don't get used by them (native speakers) - it gets a lot easier to read.
Assuming you were blessed with a good optical memory.

Take the last sentence and highlight the three different scripts:

> **万寿沙羅【まんじゅさら】** において **何** も **計算** していない`イオン`が`バースト`を **防** ぐ
> **詩魔法【うたまほう】**`を` **紡** げたのは **俯瞰視点【ふかんしてん】**`を` **用** いてそれら **全** て`を`
> **感覚** で **行【おこな】** ったからである。

`を` gets a special treating because it is pretty much used in no other word
these days.

The longest string in any script here is `ったからである` at 7 (hira)gana - similar
to the first picture above. Much longer and it becomes tedious and hard(er) to
process.

* * *

Alternatively, you may substitute (for kanji) funny cryptic scribbles of
blocky-ish kana:

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TkKaO.png)

In bahee you dacinye speak Eegris:

> [Jäger](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/J%c3%a4ger#German): Donを侮っては[non-
> non](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/non#French)。彼はwonderfulなnice-
> guy．それをrememberですよ〜

The (far) above example in the mixed-script becomes (far) more comprehensible:
`東欧を覆おう` ([the clouds, personified, think:] "let's cover Eastern Europe") and
`庭には2羽鶏がい【居】る` ("there are two ['winged'] chickens in the garden).

# LetmejustgiveasummarysoIcancallthisaconclusion

Learn the language, its grammar and its word. The rest is pre-installed on
your brain. Pattern-matching (p vs. q, さ vs. ち), shape-classification (c vs.
o, 日 vs. 曰), quick-combinatorics (`Will Will will Will's will to Will` or `I
once saw a deer riding my bicycle.`) and dis-ambiguation (reed vs. read, 話す
vs. 離す) are skills we (almost) all possess.

You're doing it whenever you've got your eyes opened - you look at the things
around them, classify them, recognize them. Just look up how hard computer-
vision is. Or natural language processing.
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2015-01-03T23:42:27.587
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2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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answer