I was wondering about a few Japanese-related things that confuse me. My knowledge of the Japanese language is very limited and probably the most complex sentence I know is "あなたのなまえわなんですか"* (should probably have a whole bunch of kanji that I don't know). Gotta start somewhere, huh?
Anyway, I was mainly wondering about these two things:
1. Why are there no whitespaces in Japanese? ImagineifinEnglishwehadnowhitespacesandonlyfluentreadershadanychanceofdiscerningthewordsandtheoverallcontext? Seems like a very impractical way of writing. Is it less of a deal in Japanese where the word forms are mostly static or what? Also, is it considered improper to use whitespaces when writing, or just unnecessary?
2. When should I use Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji? I cannot read Katakana yet but I have gone through the na series and most of the ha series in Hiragana already (having a blast by the way). It seems like the basic rules are: Hiragana for informal texts, Katakana and Romaji for signs and Kanji for names and formal texts. Please correct me if any of these are incorrect. But the Windows 7 Japanese language pack often places Kanji characters in a seemingly random fashion in my sentences. Do I have any chance of getting a feel for it or do I have to be a Japanese person (I do plan on living in Japan in the future, but someone with their whole life of practice under their belt is obviously in a better position than me)?.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if you can think of anything else I should know about Japanese before continuing please tell me.
Thanks in advance.
Anyway, I was mainly wondering about these two things:
1. Why are there no whitespaces in Japanese? ImagineifinEnglishwehadnowhitespacesandonlyfluentreadershadanychanceofdiscerningthewordsandtheoverallcontext? Seems like a very impractical way of writing. Is it less of a deal in Japanese where the word forms are mostly static or what? Also, is it considered improper to use whitespaces when writing, or just unnecessary?
2. When should I use Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji? I cannot read Katakana yet but I have gone through the na series and most of the ha series in Hiragana already (having a blast by the way). It seems like the basic rules are: Hiragana for informal texts, Katakana and Romaji for signs and Kanji for names and formal texts. Please correct me if any of these are incorrect. But the Windows 7 Japanese language pack often places Kanji characters in a seemingly random fashion in my sentences. Do I have any chance of getting a feel for it or do I have to be a Japanese person (I do plan on living in Japan in the future, but someone with their whole life of practice under their belt is obviously in a better position than me)?.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if you can think of anything else I should know about Japanese before continuing please tell me.
Thanks in advance.