Trying to understand Japanese sentences

As we know, Japanese doesn't have any spaces in between the words of its sentences. For a while now I've just assumed that each individual word is separated by a particle, but I'm confused because my Japanese teacher said that Japanese "words" usually only consist of only one or two kanji. So I had a look at a Japanese website tonight just to see if I could understand anything and it made me confused even more. My confusion is this - if Japanese words are only one or two kanji, and words are separated by particles, then why does all the Japanese I read have sometimes four or five or even ten kanji in a row before a particle finally appears??

To illustrate this I've copied the below text from a news story on Yahoo (I assume it's a news story anyway):

産業再生機構の支援を受けて再建中のカネボウが６日、 カネボウ化粧品を引受先にする２００億円の第三者割当 増資を発表したことは、再生機構の「化粧品分離による 再生」というシナリオが修正を余儀なくされた結果だ。東京証券取引所による上場廃止の 決定を受け、信用補完の必要に迫られたものとみられる 。再生機構は「（本体と化粧品を）同一スポンサーに同時期に売却するのが最善」（片山龍太郎執行役員） と説明しており、一体で再生・スポンサー選びを本格化する。

I have no idea what it's about but that's not my focus. My focus is on trying to understand the structure. So as you can see, the first six characters here are all kanji ("産業再生機構") and multiple kanji in a row appear all through it. Did I misunderstand my Japanese teacher when he said that Japanese words are only one or two kanji? What am I missing here? Is "産業再生機構" an individual word or are there a couple of words in there? If there are a couple of words in there, how would you know when one word starts and stops?

Hopefully someone can explain it for me, or even point me in the direction of a website that explains it!

Cheers,

Bucko

産業再生機構 is the name of a business (often written without separating particles) and composed of three words (産業 再生 機構) -- Industrial Revival
Corporation (although technically it's more like Organization).

I just put 産業再生機構 into Jim Breen dictionary and it came up with Industrial Revitalization Corporation.

Have you used Jim Breen yet? It is an excellent dictionary where you can enter words in English, kana, kanji or romaji. Once you use it you will wonder how you ever managed without it. Here is the address:
WWWJDIC: Word Search

I think you are right that single words have only one or two kanji, but a more complicated idea like Industrial Revitalization Corporation might have more because it is made up of three words each with two kanji. In this example, 産業 means industry, 再生 means regeneration and 機構 means organisation.



Sorry Elizabeth, I was writing at the same time as you, so I said almost the same as you!

Tsuyoiko said:

I just put 産業再生機構 into Jim Breen dictionary and it came up with Industrial Revitalization Corporation.

Have you used Jim Breen yet? It is an excellent dictionary where you can enter words in English, kana, kanji or romaji. Once you use it you will wonder how you ever managed without it. Here is the address:
WWWJDIC: Word Search

I think you are right that single words have only one or two kanji, but a more complicated idea like Industrial Revitalization Corporation might have more because it is made up of three words each with two kanji. In this example, 産業 means industry, 再生 means regeneration and 機構 means organisation.

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But how do you know it's "Industrial Revitalization Corporation" (IRC) and not "Industrial Regeneration Organisation" (IRO)? Maybe this is a bad example/question but what if you were writing about an IRC and an IRO, how would you tell them apart in kanji?

I'm kind of having the same problems as Bucko

dundermusen said:

But how do you know it's "Industrial Revitalization Corporation" (IRC) and not "Industrial Regeneration Organisation" (IRO)? Maybe this is a bad example/question but what if you were writing about an IRC and an IRO, how would you tell them apart in kanji?

I'm kind of having the same problems as Bucko

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Well it probably is a bad example. Industrial Revitalization Corporation is the name of an organisation, as long as you understand the gist of what the name means I don't suppose it would matter if you said either - they both mean the same.

I think understanding whole passages like that is going to take a long time. I find it frustrating as well, but if you use a good dictionary and make a note of anything that looks useful you can slowly make a dent in it - you just have to be patient. The way I do it is if there is a long string of kanji I just paste it into Jim Breen. Sometimes you will get a translation for the whole string, other times for only part, then you have to put the next bit of the string in. You probably won't understand the whole passage that way, but you should start to get a feel for the kanji and why you sometimes get those long strings. I think.
がんばって!

dundermusen said:

But how do you know it's "Industrial Revitalization Corporation" (IRC) and not "Industrial Regeneration Organisation" (IRO)? Maybe this is a bad example/question but what if you were writing about an IRC and an IRO, how would you tell them apart in kanji?

I'm kind of having the same problems as Bucko

Click to expand...

How do you know 日産自動車 is Nissan Motor Co. and not Nissan Car Corp ?
or ヤモト運輸 is Yamoto Transport Co and not Yamoto Transportation Corp ? etc. These are standard translations of how the name is normally rendered in English backed up by company research, at times with a slightly altered meaning and other times not so much. I really don't think your Japanese is natural enough yet to worry about such subtle ambiguities. :sorry:

The Japanese habit of not placing spaces between words can be confusing and I find that it's easy to lose my place when I'm reading a long sentence. Also, as a rule, words are not always separated by particles, so don't assume that everything between particles is one word. Some words use a single kanji, some use 2, 3 or even more kanji. Many words combine kanji with hiragana or katakana, adding to the difficulty.

So if a string of kanji can contain any amount of "words" (i.e. combinations of 1 or 2 or 3 kanji) then how do you determine where each word starts and stops in the string?

For example, I've pulled out the following string of kanji that was in the paragraph that I pasted before:

片山龍太郎執行役員

(Bare in mind I have no idea what most of those kanji are) So we look at the first few kanji, 片山龍太, how do we know whether or not there are four words there of individual kanji, or two words comprised of "片山" and "龍太", or two words comprised of "片山龍" and "太" or three words comprised of "片", "山龍", and "太" etc etc?

Tsuyoiko said:

Have you used Jim Breen yet? It is an excellent dictionary where you can enter words in English, kana, kanji or romaji. Once you use it you will wonder how you ever managed without it. Here is the address:
WWWJDIC: Word Search

Click to expand...

Thank you for this I really wonder how I didn't know about this before

p.s. Iris is great... so cute :inlove:

Bucko said:

So if a string of kanji can contain any amount of "words" (i.e. combinations of 1 or 2 or 3 kanji) then how do you determine where each word starts and stops in the string?

For example, I've pulled out the following string of kanji that was in the paragraph that I pasted before:

片山龍太郎執行役員

(Bare in mind I have no idea what most of those kanji are) So we look at the first few kanji, 片山龍太, how do we know whether or not there are four words there of individual kanji, or two words comprised of "片山" and "龍太", or two words comprised of "片山龍" and "太" or three words comprised of "片", "山龍", and "太" etc etc?

Click to expand...

Erm I guess you really just have to start learning kanji, because once you do reading long strings like this just becomes natural. My Japanese is nowhere near fluent, but I know enough to piece together this string pretty easily just by knowing the kanji.

片山 - I immediately recognize this reading as Katayama (you just know these), which is a common family name. With that in mind, I can expect the next couple kanji to make up a first name. In this case, I see Ryuutarou, which is a first name that I've seen before. Of course, the readings for names could always be different and I have no way of knowing exactly what's there...names are annoying like that. Anyway, now that I have established that the first 5 kanji make up this guy's name, Ryuutarou Katayama, the next 4 might possibly be some sort of title or job description. Sure enough, I see the kanji compound that reads Shikkou Yakuin. Now, I don't have an exact definition for this, and this is where Jim Breen comes in handy. Just paste that in, and you get "operating Officer; company executive." Vague, yes, but it gives you a pretty good sense of what you're reading.

I guess the point is that the more kanji you learn, the more natural it becomes to discern where words end.

Bucko,

IfIwrotetheanswertoyourmessagelikethiswithoutanyspaces,youcouldprobablyfigureoutwhereonewordstopsandthenextwordstarts.

Of course, it's difficult for us to read but that's because we didn't grow up reading like that and they did. Once you start recognizing the kanji, you'll know where one word stops and the next one starts.

The easiest way to understand written Japanese is to learn the Kana and the Kanji. After you learn a certain word or Kanji, you can point it out in any sentence and be able to read it, without spaces. In Japanese, you will get to a point were you don't need any spaces, because the Kanji really does make a difference.

Great, thanks everyone. Hayashi, I never thought of it like that.

Bucko said:

So if a string of kanji can contain any amount of "words" (i.e. combinations of 1 or 2 or 3 kanji) then how do you determine where each word starts and stops in the string?

Click to expand...

Experience, pure and simple. Just like in the example English sentence someone else posted without the spaces, you only know where one word ends and another begins because you know the individual words. It is something that will come over time as you learn more kanji and vocabulary. It is just simply experience.

Ben W Bell said:

Experience, pure and simple. Just like in the example English sentence someone else posted without the spaces, you only know where one word ends and another begins because you know the individual words. It is something that will come over time as you learn more kanji and vocabulary. It is just simply experience.

Click to expand...

There are plenty of exceptions, but a general rule would be for a compound word with 4 kanjis together, look first at pairing them off into 2 words of two characters each. If it is three, most likely the first two go together and the last is a kanji for person, place, thing or grammatical term form that make the meaning of the word more specific. Although a lot of times the first character is the adjective modifier. As Ben and everyone has said, it's just something that has to be learned and experienced rather than lectured.

Although I can't type Japanese in this computer or I would give some examples. :sorry: