How do i know when a kanji is okurigana or standalone? Since japanese has no spaces, even if it is standalone, wouldnt it still be surrounded by hiragana? Is it just something i have to learn to get used to?
Certain combinations are going to be grammatically correct and possible, or grammatically incorrect and therefore far less likely. It really depends on a lot of factors. Additionally, some of the grammatically correct interpretations will make no sense semantically.
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I guess you mean, how do you know if kanji has okurigana. In which case, well, you just know words. If you know the word 食べる then you know when you see 食べる that it’s 食(た) with the okurigana べる.
I felt a little silly typing that. Really, it’s not something you actually need to think about very much…? Just learn vocabulary and grammar.
Yeah, it’s a bit hard to think of examples that would be difficult for me to parse, but then again, whether or not I can parse a sentence is not a measure of how a beginner will see it.
When you know the language, you will recognize what is what. EvenifIwritewithoutspacesyouknowwhatI’msaying. Because you recognize every individual word as you read it to yourself.
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justlikeyoucanreadenglishsentenceswithoutspaces. It’s actually a lot harder in english because it doesnt have particles like japanese does.
In the end it’s just like everyone before me said: You just have to know the words. Suboptimal from a beginners perspective unfortunately.
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I’m not quite sure about that…
Digression about English vs Japanese
- English has prepositions for most cases where Japanese would use a particle, except for the subject and object(s), which would mostly be が、を、に.
- Those three particles get deleted in a lot of cases, either in colloquial speech or before adverbial particles such as は or も. It’s like if everytime you used “also”, whatever subject marker just disappeared.
- Also, English has relative pronouns (who, which) and complementisers (that), which Japanese lacks.
At the end of the day, I’m not quite sure one is more difficult than the other, but maybe there’s just no point comparing the relative “difficulty” in the first place. 
There is no quantification for this difficulty, yeah no real comparing them. Maybe i only consider japanese easier to read without spaces, because im used to it not having spaces.
In jishokei it is easy to recognize, but what of you suddenly see something like 送らせた。If you don’t know the grammar it might be hard to parse. So another part is also, learn more grammar, and read alot.
I agree >_>
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