Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
That's indeed very arguable. E.g. it's definitely not sensible to count the Finnish word "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän " as 1 unit, as it's composed of over 10 suffix units altering the meaning of its base.
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Okay, I don't speak or read Finnish. I've never studied it nor seen a text written in it. I haven't a clue what that word is nor what it means. I don't know if you're citing an example of something that's common in the language or some sort of technical term. Is this word an example of what one would see in everyday literature? Are Finnish books filled with words of that length? How common are they?
Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
I doubt that's correct. Although it's true that words are usually read whole, it's also true that longer words usually take longer to read than shorter words. AFAIK people almost completely "jump over" (i.e., the eye movement doesn't slow down significantly at) very short words, such as "a", when they read.
If speed readers would read every word equally fast then Finnish speed readers would finish books in considerably less time, but AFAIK this is not the case. AFAIK the number of characters more accurately reflects both the length of the text and the speed with which it's read.
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That's the thing, I know what I said holds true for English. I can't speak for Finnish but you seem to be suggesting that 50 character words are common. Yeah, I can see where such words might be difficult to process as a single glyph.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msundman
Certainly characters are meaningful units of character-based languages, so I don't know what you're getting at.
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What I'm getting at is that by and large it's words not letters that are sensible in reading a text but as I stated above I can only speak in terms of the English language with any certainty. This may not hold true for all or even most languages, I really don't know.