--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 10:38:15 -0400, Marco Cimarosti

> So, this gets me to wondering whether the Thais have a

somewhat-different

> concept of what constitutes a word, as compared with native
> speakers/writers of word-separated languages/scripts.

Historically there certainly seems to be quite a bit of confusion of
the concepts of syllable and word - the terms for live and dead
syllables use the word for 'word' rather than the word for 'syllable'.
In handwriting, there are often spaces between words or syllables
(the treatment of multi-syllable words is inconsistent), but the
better educated seem to be much better at omitting these spaces. Some
Thais deny the existence of these spaces, but I find them a great help
in reading unfamiliar handwriting, so I believe they're real.

Richard.