How do native Japanese speakers automatically recognize word boundaries?

I wrote an article about reading without spaces in the previous article.

Native Japanese speakers can read sentences even if there is Hiragana only in the sentence.

The reason is that native Japanese speakers automatically recognize word boundaries.

However, why can they do it? How do they automatically recognize word boundaries?

In this article, we think about this.

Key elements for recognizing word breaks

There are 4 key elements for recognizing word breaks.

Separating words by character type

Japanese sentences are composed of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Mainly 漢字 (Kanji) and カタカナ (Katakana) indicate the meaning of words, and ひらがな (Hiragana) serves as particles.

For example, “私はアメを食べます。”.

Kanji “私”, “食べます” and Katakana “アメ” are nouns and verb so they are words.

Hiragana “は” and “ を” are particles.

Therefore we can read and understand it.

Particles between words

Japanese sentences have particles instead of having no spaces.

For example, “明日は仕事に行きます。”.

There are particles between words.

“明日(word)” + “は(particle)” + “仕事(word)” + “に(particle)” + “行きます(word)”

So we can read and understand sentences even if there is no spaces.

Inference ability based on context

Even if sentences have only Hiragana, its meaning can be understood depending on the context.

For example, “はしをわたる。”.

“はし” has 2 different meanings that are “bridge” and “chopsticks”.

But in this case, there is “わたる” (cross) as verb. So we can understand the meaning of “はし” is “bridge”.

Separating of meaning by clauses

If you understand how to separate phrases, you can easily understand how to separate words.

For example, “きょうはてんきがよいです。”.

This sentence is composed of 3 causes, “きょうは”, “てんきが”, “よいです”.

So we can separate words and understand this sentence.

Steps to understand Japanese word separations?

Native speakers go through the following process to understand it.

Memorize word separations from listening

When you are unable to read, you can learn words and sentences by listening to them.

Even if you can’t read, it’s possible to memorize the meaning of words.

Learning Hiragana connects word with Hiragana

After you learn Hiragana that is basic Japanese character, you can connect words with Hiragana.

At this stage, the words learned during listening are visualized.

The introduction of Kanji clarifies the separations between words

Introducing Kanji that represent the meaning of words will make the separations between words even clear.

By particles and clauses, you can read and understand sentences accurately

Even if you don’t understand Kanji, by learning the grammar of particles and clauses, you can understand how to separate words and understand sentences.

Practical tips for learners

I will introduce practical tips for beginners, intermediate learners, and advanced learners.

For beginners

If you can’t read Hiragana, please try these steps.

1. Memorize the meaning of words by listening
2. Learn how to read Hiragana and read aloud
3. Connect words that you memorized by listening with Hiragana
4. Learn particles and clauses

For intermediate learners

If you can read only Hiragana, please try these steps.

1. Memorize the meaning of words by reading aloud Hiragana
2. Learn particle and clauses
3. Divide into clauses using “word + particle”

For advanced learners

If you can read Kanji, please try these steps.

1. Learn the meaning of homophones
2. Read example sentences using homophones and understand the difference
3. Understand sentences by inferring the meaning of words from the context

Conclusion

You can understand how words are separated by character types, particles, clauses, and context.

This time I introduced some simple learning steps.

I hope this article is useful for your Japanese learning.

Thank you for reading this.