unclebob Posted March 11, 2006 at 02:13 AM Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 at 02:13 AM Hi all, I have just recently become interested in the chinese language and have not studied it very much yet. My question is about using spaces between chinese words, the same way as when writing pinyin: 1: Why is this not used? For me as a beginner it seems soooo much simpler. 2: If one writes with spaces between words, are they considered bad writers? 3: Is there any discussions in china at all about maybe using spaces when writing chinese sentences? 4: What are your personal opinion? I have tried searching for topics about this but I have yet found any. Cheers! //Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quest Posted March 11, 2006 at 02:52 AM Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 at 02:52 AM I have tried searching for topics about this but I have yet found any. There was one about this a while ago. I think it was concluded that character boundaries make word boundaries somewhat redundant and unnecessary. However, spaces could help in distinguishing proper names and unfamiliar scientific terms, but underlining would be more elegant and efficient. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted March 11, 2006 at 03:23 AM Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 at 03:23 AM this one, from about 18 months ago, covered the issue a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferno Posted March 11, 2006 at 03:56 AM Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 at 03:56 AM i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gougou Posted March 11, 2006 at 04:53 AM Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 at 04:53 AM i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of wordsHelp whom? You mean to say having 1.3 billion people change their entire mental programming in order to accomodate a couple of million foreign learners? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted March 11, 2006 at 12:46 PM Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 at 12:46 PM i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words Yeah, because that's a major problem for your average Zhou about town. Have you considered learning Esperanto, or perhaps C++? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kudra Posted March 12, 2006 at 12:11 AM Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 at 12:11 AM i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words Ferno, when you speak your native language, do you think about morpheme? Do you think the answer to that question has anything to do with the writing system which you presumably learned well after you could talk? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lu Posted March 12, 2006 at 06:47 PM Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 at 06:47 PM And another problem: how in the world are you going to decide where the spaces are? Is it gongchan dang or gongchandang, shehui zhuyi or shehuizhuyi, jingdi zhi wa, jing di zhi wa or jingdi-zhiwa, to name but a few? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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