Japanese word breaks is a longstanding problem, largely due to the language itself. But I wanted to point out some examples that I’m seeing in virtually every lesson nowadays.
I ‘know’ about 53,000 words in Japanese according to my LingQ stats, so I really shouldn’t be coming across many new words. Yet I often have dozens of new words in a lesson, and at least half of them are not words at all, just nonsensical combinations of two or more words (including particles).
I love using LingQ and am pointing these problems out not to be critical but to help improve the usefulness of the system.
Here are some examples, grouped into three themes:
- Topic or subject particles being grouped together with the adjoining word. In the example below, は is a topic particle (sort of like saying “as for…”) and 語り手 is a noun meaning a/the narrator. This is a bit like saying “As for [something else] … the narrator…” in English and claiming it’s a single word.
- Adding the copula です and its variants like で and である to a word and claiming it’s one word. In the example below, the suggested definitions are shown (I already know these words). 機械的で is like saying “it’s mechanical [and…]” and again claiming it’s one word when it’s actually a phrase. 機械的で should be broken up as 機械的 で [space between]. Likewise with 無愛想で, which should be 無愛想 で.
- This is by far the most frustrating for me at the moment as I come across multiple instances of this in every lessons I import these days. For some reason, LingQ assumes every instance of って to be part of a verb. This is understandable in the sense that verbs in the -te form often have the って pattern, but in these examples って is acting as a standalone particle. This usage is meant primarily to quote or cite something. The って here should be treated as a separate word on its own.
