Comments
JoshuaACNewman t1_jb8luk4 wrote
English and other alphabets derived from the Roman alphabet used to be like this, too. Spaces and punctuation and mixed case are all pretty recent.
RedRedditor84 t1_jb95k3r wrote
It's not exactly like that. Kanji makes it more like if you used camel case in English. MoreLikeIfYouWroteLikeThis. But even that's not the same since kanji are far more distinct than upper case letters.
AnglerJared t1_jb963oh wrote
Fair, but that comparison loses traction for katakana and hiragana compounds, so I don’t think I missed the mark by that much. I’d have to combine Roman numerals and some kind of ideographic font like a complex mixed Wingdings to truly represent the difference, but I considered my approach sufficient to get the point across.
I do find it fascinating how many people like to chime in about how much more they understand about the Japanese language than a person who has lived in the country for the better part of two decades, though.
RedRedditor84 t1_jb9aryn wrote
You made it sound like Japanese was as difficult to read as running all your words together. And on the odd occasion you actually find all hiragana, children's books, for example, you'll find spaces to help separate words.
I find it fascinating that someone with near 20 years experience thinks they can misrepresent the facts and be surprised when people "chime in".
InkOrganizer t1_jbccxqu wrote
They didn’t say 20 years of humble learning of extremely high-context language. As apparent in that reply.
AnglerJared t1_jb9gyrs wrote
I was trying to illustrate the formatting and to show it wouldn’t be all that hard to read if we did it that was in English, either. And you can keep moving the goalposts all you want; your comment was unnecessarily pedantic and didn’t really make a rebuttal of any point you thought I was trying to make.
でも、この話を続けたいのだったら、是非日本語でお願いします。そんなに日本語が詳しい方なら、きっと大丈夫でしょう。では。
InkOrganizer t1_jbccb8z wrote
Maybe because we are native speakers?
AnglerJared t1_jbcw7u1 wrote
I’d argue that a native speaker who had been raised in Japan wouldn’t have found any fault in what I originally said. I’d also say that native speakers aren’t necessarily any more aware of writing formats than people who’ve acquired the language (though I admit they likely are), or of the nuance of English which would contribute to the linguistic comparison.
The third, and most relevant, point I’ll raise is that, by and large, the majority of people who’ve made comments like this to me in the past were not at all native speakers.
RobinsShaman t1_jb97xho wrote
Meaning of camel case in English. the use of a capital letter to begin the second word in a compound name or phrase, when it is not separated from the first word by a space: Examples of camel case include "iPod" and "GaGa".
Neither_Parking3581 OP t1_jb8kgew wrote
Thai, Lao and Khmer too.
tejota t1_jb8llvk wrote
And I did! I was surprised
_Mechaloth_ t1_jb8mnvm wrote
Line breaks in Japanese are more commonly done after particles.
AnglerJared t1_jb8opaf wrote
That depends on formatting. Newspapers and novels tend to have lines of equal length and therefore break after a certain number of characters regardless. Manga might format things for more natural breaks, but it’s by no means illegible if they don’t.
UsualCounterculture t1_jb8qa7z wrote
Each character is an individual syllable in Chinese so it's not hard to read. It flows. It would be weird with spaces!
frankstaturtle t1_jb8ngtv wrote
Latin too! Made translating difficult in HS 😬
542Archiya124 t1_jbaownx wrote
Another fun fact - it’s extremely hard to guess how to pronounce a new word unless somebody else tell you how to pronounce it properly.
Neither_Parking3581 OP t1_jbcsr6f wrote
Different words with different tonal inflections will convey different meanings. That's why it's called a tonal language/tone language.
PlayerSalt t1_jb8sy1h wrote
I thought each chinese character was a word though ? If each english letter was a word spaces would still be handy but less important
Plinio540 t1_jb915az wrote
A word can be comprised of either one symbol, or many symbols!
[deleted] t1_jb8zs6d wrote
[deleted]
FlyWithChrist t1_jb9yuxr wrote
Korean has spaces but the rules aren’t the same as English (every word) so it made it really confusing during my koreaboo phase.
kudincha t1_jbg9ypq wrote
So like my name then...
AnglerJared t1_jb8jwpu wrote
Japanese, too. And line breaks in the middle of words are completely normal.
It’slikeifIwrotelikethisandy
ouunderstooditbecauseth
ereareenoughcontextclue
sthatthemeaningisclear.