Nonsensical Japanese Word Breaks

Japanese is one of those languages without spaces, so I understand the challenge involved in defining a single word relative to others. But I’ve noticed a lot of instances where two or more words are being clumped together as one word - but it makes no sense.

Here’s an example in just one sentence:

The first should be “して 人権” not “して人権” >>> して is basically the present tense of ‘doing’ while 人権 means human rights. It makes no sense for these to be clumped together.

The second should be “な 人権” >>> な is a particle that basically connects a type of adjective to a noun (like the suffixes “-al” as in “international” or “-ish” as in “stylish”) while 人権, as noted above, means human rights.

My Japanese is advanced enough that I can recognize where the breaks don’t make sense and ignore these Frankenstein words, but I imagine this would make learning Japanese on LingQ (needlessly) much more difficult for beginner and lower-intermediate learners.

3 Likes

been saying this for ages now. It wont get fixed sadly

2 Likes

Probably not but it’s worth flagging again for the team. It’s likely done by AI rather than LingQ’s own programming, so may not be within their control.

We’ll do our best to have this improved. Can you post a link to that specific lesson from your screenshot?

1 Like

Sure, thank you. (By the way, if it matters at all, I realized I made a mistake in my first reference - it’s して人身 not して人権)

This is from paragraph 43 (last one) of this lesson (which is private but maybe your team can see it).

1 Like

Please send the lesson URL to support@lingq.com. Thanks!

yeah maybe not but It was better before as im sure you know since you are a long time user but i just deal with it now cuz i was getting so frustrated about it but i still like lingq. I wished there was a way we could edit lingqs on the fly to fix these issues ourselves at the very least

1 Like

This is not a case of the past tense, として means " as." or in that role. I believe this is classified as N3 grammar, but I might be mistaken about that. In general, LingQ isn’t good about separating grammer from words.

It’s pretty common, I’ve prob seen 100k+ of these. You do get used to after a while, but it’s not helpful to pick out grammar. You really need to review grammar enough to be able to recognize them on your own.

2 Likes

I see your point. My concern is mainly how it would turn off people starting LingQ at a lower level of Japanese. In this instance, you’re right, it is “として,” but it’s breaking off the して and attaching it to 人身 to make して人身 – someone with a lower knowledge level might think this is a word/phrase, or might get needlessly frustrated trying to figure out what’s going on. Only with the surrounding context can someone with an intermediate/advanced knowledge realize there’s a word break error.