13 ms·

The annnoying part in written thai is thattherearenospacesbetweenwords.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Spaces between words is a relatively recent Irish invention (7th or 8th century) in western written language, so it’s not like it’s an obvious thing to have.
- postcynical 3y ago
  12 centuries should be plenty of time for a simple upgrade to improve the UX of a language.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    It was not much needed until computer text processing become a thing.
  - sundarurfriend 3y ago
    The UX of a language for most people for most of that time was speech.
    - aksss 3y ago
      Very true, and we should remember that in a lot of (all?) cultures across time, literacy (learning to read and write) was a marker of class, and/or a protected trade, and/or considered sacred, and/or considered profane. In other words, there wasn’t much an incentive or recognized need to make the scribe’s job easy to pick up. Caesar (I think) tells us that the druids of the Celts did not allow members of their tradition to write down their beliefs, traditions, etc. Writing in that context (prior to 50 BCE) was profane. Of course, those of us in America are familiar with slaves being prevented from learning to read. Forced illiteracy in this context was a tool of oppression. [1] I think in one of S.M. Sterling’s fictional books (On the Ocean of Eternity?? Part of the Island in the Sea of Time series, anyway) there’s a great exchange with a Babylonian scribe who laughs at the simplistic alphabet of the American, condescendingly remarking that child could learn that, to which the guy replied, yeah, that’s entirely the point! 1. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/singleton/singleton.html https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/singleton/singleton.html I can’t help but link this recollection by William Henry Singleton. He recounts being whipped as a child because it was thought that he had merely opened a book, but the whole pamphlet he authored(!) (and available to read in full at that link) after becoming free, fighting in the War, and learning to read/write, is an utterly fascinating account from a primary source spanning from his experience being born into slavery in about 1830 to the point where he authored this in about 1920. It’s too easy to understate but this man saw a lot of change in a momentous century, first-hand.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Spaces between words is a relatively recent Irish invention (7th or 8th century) in western written language, so it’s not like it’s an obvious thing to have. Perhaps, but interpuncts between words are several centuries older than that and occur as natural developments in e.g. the Roman Empire. https://loeb-art-center.vassarspaces.net/wp-content/gallery/divine-shades-inscriptions/CC41_027.jpg https://loeb-art-center.vassarspaces.net/wp-content/gallery/... The concept of word separation is an obvious thing to have. Whether the separator is empty space is unimportant.
- mahkeiro 3y ago
  Latin used dots to separate words.
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?
qingcharles 3y ago
Do any ideographic languages use spaces? I'm used to it in Asian languages but it still does my head in when I try to read older Latin documents.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  How many (modern, written) "ideographic languages" exist? I can think of two: Chinese and Japanese. Old Korean and Vietnamese used some Chinese characters, but the modern languages use none. It is interesting to me when written Chinese and Japanese use commas. It is pretty much never required, but pure style. It does help to breakup a complex sentence, similar to phonetic languages.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    Comma is required in modern Chinese. Nobody will bother reading your text if you don't at least put some of them in the right places... (I don't know Japanese so I can't speak to that)
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      Nice post. Can you give a simple example sentence where it is required? (I believe you.) I studied Mandarin and Cantonese for a few years, but I never got the level where I thought commas were required.
      - hnfong 3y ago
        Just a random text I had handy: 起初我見到一碟芽菜同西芹，以為佢上錯菜，用刀叉掘咗幾下，終於見到埋咗響底嘅叉燒。 Nobody writes it like this: 起初我見到一碟芽菜同西芹以為佢上錯菜用刀叉掘咗幾下終於見到埋咗響底嘅叉燒。 Can people parse the latter (with some difficulty)? Sure. The commas are not required to the extent that you can butcher the sentence even more without losing its essential meaning, but why stop there? You can remove even more stuff from it and still retain most of the meaning: 初我見碟芽菜同西芹以為上錯用刀叉掘幾下終見埋底嘅叉燒 But that's not how people write.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
geomark 3y ago
yougetuseditafterawhile The thing that bugs me about written Thai is that there are spaces now and then and you would expect them to be at sentence breaks but they seem to be randomly placed throughout the text, almost as if that's where the writer felt like he needed to take a breath instead of where one sentence ends and another begins.
dumbotron 3y ago
Hence expertsexchange.com
deadfoxygrandpa 3y ago
idk the more chinese i learn, the more im convinced that the very concept of individual words is blurred and not quite the same because of the way the writing system works 中国共产党, is that one word? should you break it up as 中国共产党? what about 中国共产党? i dont think its nearly as clear which of these is correct as it is in english

Spaces between words is a relatively recent Irish invention (7th or 8th century) in western written language, so it’s not like it’s an obvious thing to have.

postcynical 3y ago
12 centuries should be plenty of time for a simple upgrade to improve the UX of a language.
- fomine3 3y ago
  It was not much needed until computer text processing become a thing.
- sundarurfriend 3y ago
  The UX of a language for most people for most of that time was speech.
  - aksss 3y ago
    Very true, and we should remember that in a lot of (all?) cultures across time, literacy (learning to read and write) was a marker of class, and/or a protected trade, and/or considered sacred, and/or considered profane. In other words, there wasn’t much an incentive or recognized need to make the scribe’s job easy to pick up. Caesar (I think) tells us that the druids of the Celts did not allow members of their tradition to write down their beliefs, traditions, etc. Writing in that context (prior to 50 BCE) was profane. Of course, those of us in America are familiar with slaves being prevented from learning to read. Forced illiteracy in this context was a tool of oppression. [1] I think in one of S.M. Sterling’s fictional books (On the Ocean of Eternity?? Part of the Island in the Sea of Time series, anyway) there’s a great exchange with a Babylonian scribe who laughs at the simplistic alphabet of the American, condescendingly remarking that child could learn that, to which the guy replied, yeah, that’s entirely the point! 1. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/singleton/singleton.html https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/singleton/singleton.html I can’t help but link this recollection by William Henry Singleton. He recounts being whipped as a child because it was thought that he had merely opened a book, but the whole pamphlet he authored(!) (and available to read in full at that link) after becoming free, fighting in the War, and learning to read/write, is an utterly fascinating account from a primary source spanning from his experience being born into slavery in about 1830 to the point where he authored this in about 1920. It’s too easy to understate but this man saw a lot of change in a momentous century, first-hand.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Spaces between words is a relatively recent Irish invention (7th or 8th century) in western written language, so it’s not like it’s an obvious thing to have. Perhaps, but interpuncts between words are several centuries older than that and occur as natural developments in e.g. the Roman Empire. https://loeb-art-center.vassarspaces.net/wp-content/gallery/divine-shades-inscriptions/CC41_027.jpg https://loeb-art-center.vassarspaces.net/wp-content/gallery/... The concept of word separation is an obvious thing to have. Whether the separator is empty space is unimportant.
mahkeiro 3y ago
Latin used dots to separate words.

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?

qingcharles 3y ago

Do any ideographic languages use spaces? I'm used to it in Asian languages but it still does my head in when I try to read older Latin documents.

throwaway2037 3y ago
How many (modern, written) "ideographic languages" exist? I can think of two: Chinese and Japanese. Old Korean and Vietnamese used some Chinese characters, but the modern languages use none. It is interesting to me when written Chinese and Japanese use commas. It is pretty much never required, but pure style. It does help to breakup a complex sentence, similar to phonetic languages.
- hnfong 3y ago
  Comma is required in modern Chinese. Nobody will bother reading your text if you don't at least put some of them in the right places... (I don't know Japanese so I can't speak to that)
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    Nice post. Can you give a simple example sentence where it is required? (I believe you.) I studied Mandarin and Cantonese for a few years, but I never got the level where I thought commas were required.
    - hnfong 3y ago
      Just a random text I had handy: 起初我見到一碟芽菜同西芹，以為佢上錯菜，用刀叉掘咗幾下，終於見到埋咗響底嘅叉燒。 Nobody writes it like this: 起初我見到一碟芽菜同西芹以為佢上錯菜用刀叉掘咗幾下終於見到埋咗響底嘅叉燒。 Can people parse the latter (with some difficulty)? Sure. The commas are not required to the extent that you can butcher the sentence even more without losing its essential meaning, but why stop there? You can remove even more stuff from it and still retain most of the meaning: 初我見碟芽菜同西芹以為上錯用刀叉掘幾下終見埋底嘅叉燒 But that's not how people write.
- ngcc_hk 3y ago

geomark 3y ago

yougetuseditafterawhile The thing that bugs me about written Thai is that there are spaces now and then and you would expect them to be at sentence breaks but they seem to be randomly placed throughout the text, almost as if that's where the writer felt like he needed to take a breath instead of where one sentence ends and another begins.

dumbotron 3y ago

Hence expertsexchange.com

deadfoxygrandpa 3y ago

idk the more chinese i learn, the more im convinced that the very concept of individual words is blurred and not quite the same because of the way the writing system works 中国共产党, is that one word? should you break it up as 中国共产党? what about 中国共产党? i dont think its nearly as clear which of these is correct as it is in english