Kana text

[eeky]

If Japanese of any complexity is written entirely in kana, do native Japanese speakers find it troublesome to read, or is it just as easy as if it were written using kanji? Are there many problems with homonyms and word-boundary ambiguities, for example? If there are such problems, then presumably in spoken Japanese these would be resolved by the intonation?

 

[undrentide]

If Japanese of any complexity is written entirely in kana, do native Japanese speakers find it troublesome to read, or is it just as easy as if it were written using kanji? Are there many problems with homonyms and word-boundary ambiguities, for example? If there are such problems, then presumably in spoken Japanese these would be resolved by the intonation?

If everything is written in kana, that's very difficult to read it.
I guess it's like a text in English without punctuation and spaces...
e.g.
IfJapaneseofanycomplexityiswrittenentirelyinkanadonativeJapanesespeakersfindittroublesome toreadorisitjustaseasyasifitwerewrittenusingkanji?

As for homonyms, we can judge it from the context most of the time, sometimes from intonation.
Of course sometimes we ask "which of them?" when it is not clear from the context.

 

[eeky]

Talking of spaces between words, is there a strict concept in Japanese of what a "word" actually is? I sometimes notice variations in romaji transliterations; for example, what is "shirimasendeshita" in one place might be "shirimasen deshita" in another. In such problem cases are there any rules to say which is correct?

 

[yasuyuki]

I think it is not so difficult because when we make a conversation, we cannot use any kanji but we can translate into kanjis without any effort.
However, by mixing kanjis and kanas, we can read texts so easily and speedy that reading sentences with only kanas seems a little confusing and troublesome.
Just consider with even only kanas, more than 50 letters are used so the speed of reading only kanas might be faster than English (although I never have tested...).

 

[yasuyuki]

Sorry for continuous posts, but that is very interesting points.
Maybe, there is no strict rule to write romaji (at least I don't know...)
but "shirimasendeshita" seems correct for me because when we use kanas and kanjis, we don't make any spaces among them.
However, even though I know that, I will use spaces and choose "shirimasen deshita" because I know romaji is not common for you guys (including us, to tell the truth...).
I think by taking notice of spaces, we might know his or her personality and character.

 

[Toritoribe]

Talking of spaces between words, is there a strict concept in Japanese of what a "word" actually is? I sometimes notice variations in romaji transliterations; for example, what is "shirimasendeshita" in one place might be "shirimasen deshita" in another. In such problem cases are there any rules to say which is correct?

Actually, there's no strict rule. It can be said that "shiri mase n deshi ta" is also correct when parsing it.

shiri: the ren'youkei of the verb "shiru"
mase: the mizenkei of the auxiliary verb "masu"
n: the n-euphonic change of shuushikei of the auxiliary verb "zu/nu"
deshi: the ren'youkei of the auxiliary verb "desu"
ta: the shuushikei of the auxiliary verb "ta"