The lack of space is a real problem for a beginner!

Japanese Language
#1

Hi everyone!

I was reading the WK example sentences, but I can’t figure out how to separate the words in this one:

多分、レイヤーさんなのかもしれないよ。

and the translation (“Maybe she is a cosplayer”) is not helpful at all!
Is it:

レイヤーさん • なのか • も • しれない • よ
レイヤー • さん • なの • かも • しれない • よ
レイヤーさん • な • のか • も • しれない よ

or what else??.. how to tell apart each words when they are all together with no kanji??.. how do Japanese people do this everyday??.. :frowning:
I’m frustrated…
Thank you guys!!

3 Likes
#2

As you said yourself, it’s a beginner problem. When you know the words, it’s obvious 99.9% of the time. In this case, かもしれない is a word on its own. なの is often required grammatically, depending on the structure.

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#3

also you can tell レイヤー is one word because it’s in katakana, and the honorific さん is often added onto the end of nouns that refer to people/roles/occupations

does take practice to get use to though

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#4

Oh, I see, it’s かも知れない on jisho, and it means “may, possibly”… Wanikani will never teach me this word, so how do I know it? Well, let me rephrase that: when WK doesn’t teach you all the words, how do you recognize the words you don’t know, when they are not clearly distinguishable in a all-together sentence??.. is there any trick or something??

#5

Grammar. The more grammar you learn, the easier it becomes to find the breaks in words. And of course the more words you do know, the easier it becomes to identify the ones you don’t know.

4 Likes
#6

Claro, thank you!

1 Like
#7

also it’s not that common to have lots of hiragana in a row, so you can usually tell where to split words based on kanji/katakana

#8

aaah, I understand!!.. なの is “expectation and explanation” in Tae Kim’s guide!!.. the only difference is that in Tae Kim’s example sentences it’s always at the end, while here it’s in the middle, so I didn’t recognize this particle as such, and I stupidly thought of なのか being 七日 :sweat_smile:
eeh, I really need a better resource where to study the grammar!!.. I will go for The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, seems so serious and well made…

もっと • ありがとう :laughing:

#9

Wait till you know a bit more kanji and then like me you’ll start complaining that there is too much ひらがな in some places :smiley: .

Incidentally, the dot you used is sometimes used to separate words when it would’ve been otherwise unclear, like in English names to separate the name and surname.

2 Likes
#10

haha, I already do!! I love kanji!! :yum:

1 Like
#11

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