Thanks Neko and Dale. Again, you work while I sleep!
I am thankful for our modern conventions. The lack of spacing makes me uneasy -- like reading is more of a puzzle than a pleasure.
It makes me wonder if there isn't a fundamental difference in cognitive processes while reading. Firstly, one transforms the hanzi images into meaning without going through any auditory decoding. Of course, we so so in English as well if we sight-read, but it is fundamentally a two-step process -- especially while learning. It is not quite saying the Asian languages are representational rather than symbolic, but it verges on it.
In Asian languages a sentence is still an idea. But having everything jammed together seems like it would lend ambiguity and require a more complex sorting and categorizing process during the decoding phase. Ambiguity is more of a problem in Chinese, I think, as there are many homophones and meaning is often sorted out from context. Additionally the general taboo against ending a syllable with a consonant so reduces the code space of the language that to represent all of the meanings required, homophones are needed.
My Chinese friends tell me the idea of "story" is different for them. Where we summarize at the beginning and tend to presage conclusions, they will literally leave you in the dark until the final paragraph (assuming there is such a thing) whereupon they draw together all of the loose ends and present the idea it its totality. This is probably more exciting intellectually for the reader, but it make it much harder for a poor waiguiren to teach English composition
