Spaces between words?

[unclebob]

Hi all, I have just recently become interested in the chinese language and have not studied it very much yet. My question is about using spaces between chinese words, the same way as when writing pinyin:

1: Why is this not used? For me as a beginner it seems soooo much simpler.

2: If one writes with spaces between words, are they considered bad writers?

3: Is there any discussions in china at all about maybe using spaces when writing chinese sentences?

4: What are your personal opinion?

I have tried searching for topics about this but I have yet found any.

Cheers!

//Erik

[Quest]

I have tried searching for topics about this but I have yet found any.

There was one about this a while ago. I think it was concluded that character boundaries make word boundaries somewhat redundant and unnecessary. However, spaces could help in distinguishing proper names and unfamiliar scientific terms, but underlining would be more elegant and efficient.

[roddy]

this one, from about 18 months ago, covered the issue a bit.

[Ferno]

i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words

[gougou]

i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words

Help whom? You mean to say having 1.3 billion people change their entire mental programming in order to accomodate a couple of million foreign learners?

[roddy]

i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words

Yeah, because that's a major problem for your average Zhou about town. Have you considered learning Esperanto, or perhaps C++?

[kudra]

i think it would help Chinese stop thinking in terms of morphemes/characters and start thinking in terms of words

Ferno, when you speak your native language, do you think about morpheme? Do you think the answer to that question has anything to do with the writing system which you presumably learned well after you could talk?

[Lu]

And another problem: how in the world are you going to decide where the spaces are? Is it gongchan dang or gongchandang, shehui zhuyi or shehuizhuyi, jingdi zhi wa, jing di zhi wa or jingdi-zhiwa, to name but a few?