Word Spacing Question

[theraw]

I am confused about the spacing of words when reading kana. It seems [from the material I've seen so far] as though there are no spaces between words like in Romanized texts. How can you tell were one word ends and the other begins?

[dougbrowne]

You are correct, there are no spaces. But that should not hinder your reading...

you can read "hellohowareyou" can't you?

[PockyMePink]

Kanji makes up for the lack of spaces.

I'm not really sure if it's good to read things in only kana O.o
Kanji is used in the first place to distinguish words....

[FreddyLea]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

Ilvoemydrinlagwfie...

i could read that, but i am a native english speaker, i am dyslexic and i am left-handed ...

it is taking me a bit to get used to the kana all running together when i am trying to translate something .. often times i have to write down the romanji for the chars before i can figure out what it is saying ...

but i am still just in the learning process of it all (been working on it for a little over a month, at a slow pace) ...

would like to find a good source to start learning Kanji as well ...

[synce]

You don't have to worry about spacing because most text isn't written entirely in kana. It's all about the kanji! Check out some of the James Heisig books if you'd like a unique (and very effective for me) way of learning kana and kanji.

[Tangram]

Learning kanji is the key. To be at all literate in Japanese, you must learn kanji. Don't like the 2,000 or so you need to know to be literate daunt you, though! There are a lot of resources out there.

[KyleGoetz]

This is a very interesting point of Japanese-as-a-second-language you've hit upon. When starting out, you know very little of the grammar, so you rely on things like kanji to help determine where one word ends and another begins.

Ten years ago, when I started studying Japanese on my own, I could read Ranma 1/2 manga more easily than Doraemon manga, even though Ranma has kanji and Doraemon does not.

However, once I learned the simple grammar points and some vocabulary, reading Japanese without kanji became easier. Of course, once I learned kanji, I found reading with kanji more easily scannable and also more easily interpretable (seeing an unfamiliar word in kanji is much easier to understand than seeing one written in hiragana).

And Tenchu, I'd watch out calling one language retarded. I can read Japanese if the kana are written out of order like in your English example. Example: この文、読るめか？

Besides, if you don't need spaces (which you don't in Japanese as made obvious by their high literacy rate and lack of spaces), why use them? That seems to be the stupid alternative (using spaces when they're not needed).

On the other hand, I think spaces in English make English more readable than non-spaced English. One reason is that we only use one script. Now, if English were non-spaced but alternated between regular and bold fonts, I don't think we'd need spaces. But that's a whole other bucket of fish.

[alanX]

There is no spacing in Japanese. With the exception of sometimes putting spaces when they write in Romaji.

Other than Romaji, there's no spacing.

[BratGaki]

Once you start learning Japanese, you'll learn about particles and ending/beginnings of adjectives and verbs that make learning where and when words start and stop easier. All, of course, with the combination of kanji.

For instance, in the sentence I'll bold particles, verb endings, adjective endings, etc and make each word a color so you can see how your eye kind of "learns" these things after a while.

その家はかなりぼろ屋になっている

[emiluvsjmusic]

Its kind of hard to get used to especially if you only use hiragana but when you use more kanji it becomes easier to read, I think.