5 ms·

Same with Chinese language, thus lexing and parsing requires knowing many more words than in languages with spaces between words.

by xvilka 3y ago

zdragnar 3y ago
As an English native speaker who learned Mandarin, I really didn't find the lack of spaces harmful to learning the language. Since each character represents a syllable, rather than a specific sound, and the written language is essentially not phonetic, reading the characters is an entirely different experience. OTOH, you have English and German and others that frequently use compound words, and the use of spaces becomes really important to understanding the writing. I have zero experience with Thai.
- dumbotron 3y ago
  > As an English native speaker who learned Mandarin, I really didn't find the lack of spaces harmful to learning the language. Definitely. The logograms and being in a completely different language family are the real hurdles.
- hibbelig 3y ago
  > OTOH, you have English and German and others that frequently use compound words, and the use of spaces becomes really important to understanding the writing. Schleifmaschinenverleih would like to have a word with you. This is parsed as Schleif-Maschinen-Verleih. Verleih means a rental company. The middle one is machine, and the first one I find both sanding and whetting as translations, not sure which one it is. So you can rent sanding and/or whetting machines there. There are cases where it's ambiguous but for the most part the lack of spaces in compound nouns in German is not an issue. A somewhat infamous example is Rohrohrzucker which should be parsed as Roh-Rohr-Zucker (raw cane sugar), but Rohr-Ohr-Zucker is also possible (pipe ear sugar). It's pretty clear when it happens that you got the wrong parsing but it takes a while to figure out what the right parsing is :-) As far as speaking is concerned: I guess the extra spaces in English don't necessarily translate to pauses, do they? Is plugin pronounced differently from plug-in due to the hyphen?
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    To clarify, I'm not saying that compound words are difficult to parse due to a lack of spaces. I'm saying that without any spaces in a sentence at all, it's harder to differentiate between compound and non-compound words. blueberry vs. blue berry stand up vs. standup online vs. on line (northeast US term for queueing) cartwheel vs. cart wheel Stick compound words in a sentence that doesn't have any spaces at all, and you either have to pause to grok context, or context won't even help you (blue berry vs blueberry). At least German capitalizes all of its nouns, which would certainly help. Compare this with Chinese, Korean, Japanese or other similar languages that don't use spaces at all (except perhaps after punctuation).
eric-hu 3y ago
No, it's different between Chinese and Thai. Lexing is very clear in Chinese. It's never the case that you look at a Chinese sentence and don't know where a character ends and another begins. Take this sentence in both languages: "good morning, how are you" 早安，你好吗 This sentence clearly has "spaces" and I'm pretty sure any person illiterate in Chinese could tell you there are 5 characters / words. Technically the third character is composed of 人 and 尔 but I don't know that anyone, even kids or beginners, would mistake those as _not_ going together. สวัสดีตอนเช้าคุณเป็นอย่างไรบ้าง In contrast, Thai is as you say: lexing and parsing bleed together. There are 7 words in this sentence, but you need to lex the 10 syllables and run them through your mental dictionary to recognize the possible words they could be. My Thai is very limited, but there are examples of sentences out there that actually have multiple valid readings with different semantic meanings, depending on how you group sounds together.
- Anon1096 3y ago
  早安 is made up of 2 characters but is a single word. If you fall into the trap of thinking 1 character = 1 word, you won't understand a thing. In this case you'd have thought it meant "early safe" instead of "good morning".
  - eric-hu 3y ago
    Okay, you make a good point. Let's look back at the GGP's comment though: > Same with Chinese language, thus lexing and parsing requires knowing many more words than in languages with spaces between words. In English, can you get away with knowing the meaning of "good" and "morning" and not "good morning", and know that I'm greeting you instead of commenting on the quality of this morning?
    - likpok 3y ago
      Good morning is a bad example because it has a colloquial meaning that is a least a little idiomatic. Most other words/phrases in English don’t have this effect, while many Chinese words are like 早安. 了解, for example, can’t even be pronounced without correctly parsing the word.

Same with Chinese language, thus lexing and parsing requires knowing many more words than in languages with spaces between words.

by xvilka 3y ago

Same with Chinese language, thus lexing and parsing requires knowing many more words than in languages with spaces between words.

zdragnar 3y ago

As an English native speaker who learned Mandarin, I really didn't find the lack of spaces harmful to learning the language. Since each character represents a syllable, rather than a specific sound, and the written language is essentially not phonetic, reading the characters is an entirely different experience. OTOH, you have English and German and others that frequently use compound words, and the use of spaces becomes really important to understanding the writing. I have zero experience with Thai.

dumbotron 3y ago
> As an English native speaker who learned Mandarin, I really didn't find the lack of spaces harmful to learning the language. Definitely. The logograms and being in a completely different language family are the real hurdles.
hibbelig 3y ago
> OTOH, you have English and German and others that frequently use compound words, and the use of spaces becomes really important to understanding the writing. Schleifmaschinenverleih would like to have a word with you. This is parsed as Schleif-Maschinen-Verleih. Verleih means a rental company. The middle one is machine, and the first one I find both sanding and whetting as translations, not sure which one it is. So you can rent sanding and/or whetting machines there. There are cases where it's ambiguous but for the most part the lack of spaces in compound nouns in German is not an issue. A somewhat infamous example is Rohrohrzucker which should be parsed as Roh-Rohr-Zucker (raw cane sugar), but Rohr-Ohr-Zucker is also possible (pipe ear sugar). It's pretty clear when it happens that you got the wrong parsing but it takes a while to figure out what the right parsing is :-) As far as speaking is concerned: I guess the extra spaces in English don't necessarily translate to pauses, do they? Is plugin pronounced differently from plug-in due to the hyphen?
- zdragnar 3y ago
  To clarify, I'm not saying that compound words are difficult to parse due to a lack of spaces. I'm saying that without any spaces in a sentence at all, it's harder to differentiate between compound and non-compound words. blueberry vs. blue berry stand up vs. standup online vs. on line (northeast US term for queueing) cartwheel vs. cart wheel Stick compound words in a sentence that doesn't have any spaces at all, and you either have to pause to grok context, or context won't even help you (blue berry vs blueberry). At least German capitalizes all of its nouns, which would certainly help. Compare this with Chinese, Korean, Japanese or other similar languages that don't use spaces at all (except perhaps after punctuation).

eric-hu 3y ago

No, it's different between Chinese and Thai. Lexing is very clear in Chinese. It's never the case that you look at a Chinese sentence and don't know where a character ends and another begins. Take this sentence in both languages: "good morning, how are you" 早安，你好吗 This sentence clearly has "spaces" and I'm pretty sure any person illiterate in Chinese could tell you there are 5 characters / words. Technically the third character is composed of 人 and 尔 but I don't know that anyone, even kids or beginners, would mistake those as _not_ going together. สวัสดีตอนเช้าคุณเป็นอย่างไรบ้าง In contrast, Thai is as you say: lexing and parsing bleed together. There are 7 words in this sentence, but you need to lex the 10 syllables and run them through your mental dictionary to recognize the possible words they could be. My Thai is very limited, but there are examples of sentences out there that actually have multiple valid readings with different semantic meanings, depending on how you group sounds together.

Anon1096 3y ago
早安 is made up of 2 characters but is a single word. If you fall into the trap of thinking 1 character = 1 word, you won't understand a thing. In this case you'd have thought it meant "early safe" instead of "good morning".
- eric-hu 3y ago
  Okay, you make a good point. Let's look back at the GGP's comment though: > Same with Chinese language, thus lexing and parsing requires knowing many more words than in languages with spaces between words. In English, can you get away with knowing the meaning of "good" and "morning" and not "good morning", and know that I'm greeting you instead of commenting on the quality of this morning?
  - likpok 3y ago
    Good morning is a bad example because it has a colloquial meaning that is a least a little idiomatic. Most other words/phrases in English don’t have this effect, while many Chinese words are like 早安. 了解, for example, can’t even be pronounced without correctly parsing the word.