Spacing in Korean
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The role of a Scotsman, John Ross (1842-1915), in creating it. Although he was a Christian missionary who spent over half his life in China, he was apparently a gigachad.
The following video is densely packed with solid information and moves rapidly, so you have to pay close attention to follow it.
En masse / all things considered / by and large / for the most part/ generally speaking, etc., what is said here about Korean also applies to Chinese and Japanese. Hanzi/kanji/hanjaphiles may not be happy to hear me say that.
See the candid comments by speakers of Chinese and Japanese.
And this from a Swedish speaker:
I'm Swedish and funnily enough, we have the same issues with spacing that Korean does. So much so that we even have a word for it, 'särskrivning' – roughly meaning 'writing separation'. Even funnier is the fact that the very word used to describe the error or adding spaces to compound words, is frequently also the victim of the phenomenon it describes. 'Särskrivningar' is the compound of 'sär-' – meaning separate or split – and 'skrivning' – meaning writing.
If only Peter Stephen Du Ponceau (1760-1844) had lived a century later, perhaps his preternaturally prescient understanding of the Sinographic writing system would have had a synergetic, beneficial effect on the development of Chinese characters, as John Ross did on the Korean writing system.
Selected readings
- "Peter Stephen Du Ponceau and Vietnamese dictionaries" (2/7/22)
- "A revolution in Sinitic language conceptualization and learning" (1/7/21)
- "Dumpling ingredients and character amnesia" (10/18/14)
- "Homographobia" (9/27/10)
- "John DeFrancis, August 31, 1911-January 2, 2009" (1/26/09)
- "Vietnamese polysyllabism" (10/2/12)
- "Words in Vietnamese" (10/2/18)
- "Sinographic memory in Vietnamese writing" (4/16/14)
- "Vietnamese in Chinese and Nom characters" (5/28/13)
- "Homophonophobia" (2/7/15)
- "Sino-Vietnamese poster" (12/4/17) (note the joined syllables on the poster)
- "Prolific code-switching in Vietnamese" (4/14/16)
- "Words in Mandarin: twin kle twin kle lit tle star" (8/14/12)
- "Diacriticless Vietnamese, part 2" (10/27/18)
- "'Written Cantonese must have word segmentation'" (2/23/26)
- "Why are Japanese still using kanji?" (12/5/25)
- "Mix and match Japanese orthography" (4/17/24)
- "Differential retention of sinographs across East Asia" (12/12/25)
번하드 said,
February 26, 2026 @ 7:18 pm
Very glad that you liked that video, too, your post about spacing in Cantonese made me find it:-)
Tom said,
February 27, 2026 @ 6:29 am
Following your link to "gigachad" was quite interesting. It is apparently based on a real person who looks fake. I've seen his visage multiple times before, but I had no idea a real person had a jaw like that.
Based on Wiktionary's definition of gigachad, I think John Ross would not qualify. However, based on the way I've seen the term "chad" used before, I'd say Wiktionary is not quite accurate and your usage is closer to the normal one, which is something like hypermasculine, where that term implies "productivity" combined with "fearlessness", "independence".
David Morris said,
February 27, 2026 @ 4:51 pm
The photo of Ross on Wikipedia doesn't look like the definition of gigachad given.
David Morris said,
February 27, 2026 @ 4:53 pm
I wrote that comment before I'd started watching the video. Ross's photo is shown in the video, which describes him as an 'intellectual gigachad', not merely a 'gigachad'.
KWillets said,
March 2, 2026 @ 5:01 pm
A Youtube reviewer whose name I've forgotten noted that the Korean title of No Other Choice omits spacing, so it's written 어쩔수가없다 instead of 어쩔 수가 없다 or 어쩔수가 없다 (similar to the last example in the video). Presumably it's to emphasize the rote nature of the phrase.
Chas Belov said,
March 8, 2026 @ 2:03 pm
@KWillets: Based on the title, and depending on the film genre, I might have thought the omission of spacing would indicate urgency or desperation.
KWillets said,
March 9, 2026 @ 1:55 am
@Chas Belov, the sense is hard to explain. According to an interview the director wants it to be heard as a single word "like an exclamation" instead of a "thoughtful phrase". In the plot it appears at crucial moments as an excuse or rationalization, the result of a flawed thought process rather than actual necessity.