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Question about reading unseparated words -
07-21-2011, 07:48 PM
There are some books and magazines which I'm trying to read that don't have any (visible) separation between the words of a sentence- I can't tell where one word ends and the next starts. There is only the period (to mark the end of sentence.)
How do I know where a word ends? Thanks. 
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07-21-2011, 09:33 PM
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07-21-2011, 10:30 PM
I have this same issue but I know very little japanese so far, only started two weeks ago and know most of the hiragana alphabet is all. I've wondered the same thing but imagine it would be the same as any language. In english, like the post above mine, they wrote it out all together and you can read it because you know the words. I think it makes it difficult if their really are no distinct separations but it will just take time to learn more words. I'm sure, even after learning Kanji and studying the grammer it will be difficult to begin with, and heavy use of my Japanese/English dictionary will come in.
-Buddha
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07-22-2011, 01:18 AM
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 Just kidding.  A very good (=humanely written) book on the perception of language is "Speed reading for Dummies". There the key to speed reading (one of many) is the absorption of consepts that several words create when combined together, instead of word by word. I spoke about this to a co-worker who knows no languages written with an alphabet. We both agreed that this technique would be useless to him, since he already directly reads consepts that kanji's create. In the book there are several exercises, where the words are together, where the upper (or lower) part is hidden, when the first and last letters are correct but the middle letters are mixed, etc. It is very entertaining to read, and might help you to get your own answers. Personally, when reading non-break sentences, vocabulary helps to separate words from each other. And with Japanese, conjugation made with kana (when reading kanji) of course. Kana only text is the most difficult text for me.
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07-22-2011, 05:15 AM
The problem is, if I have a 5-letter string of characters (h., k. or kanji) let's say:
abcde ...the possibilities are many. It may represent: 5 (one-letter words) + 1 (5-letter word) + 1 ("ab") + 1 ("bc") +1 ("cd") +1 ("de") + 1 ("abc") +1 ("bcd") +1 ("cde") + 1 ("abcd") + 1 ("bcde") = 11 entries I have to search in the dictionary. Anyway, Thanks for the answers.
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07-22-2011, 05:39 AM
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The possibilities are NOT nearly as many as you may think. 90% of the time, the key words the particles. By spotting them, you could easily tell where the other words start and end. Studying Japanese means studying its particles. Why do you seem so concerned about this matter now? Having read your posts, I do not even think you know so much Japanese yet. Don't start reading long sentences if you don't have the basics down. Your Japanese proficiency shall be in direct proportion
to your true interest in the Japanese Mind.
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07-22-2011, 06:12 PM
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 But in all seriousness masaegu has pointed out the key thing: particle recognition. Once you get the habit of recognizing these in a sentence, you almost always will be able to pick out what are words or compounds of words you can look up in the dictionary. I went through this process when I was first starting out. I found reading a complicated manga like Blackjack was easier than reading Doraemon, a children's manga, because I couldn't tell where one word began and one word ended; Blackjack used a lot of kanji, so it was easy to pick out where a word started and stopped. Doraemon was almost all hiragana, so it wasn't as easy.
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