What does «palabra (lenguaje)» mean in Spanish?
- A word is a unit of language that exists in contrast to other forms such as phrases and sentences, and that language users intuitively recognize as such. However, an exact definition of "word" is difficult, as it depends on which aspect of language, and indeed which specific languages, are being discussed. In normal speech, a word is regarded as a meaningful unit of language, but this definition does not take into account disagreements about what is a word and what is not (e.g., whether "table" and "tables" are one word or two words, or whether "the" is a word in the same way that "table" is a word). It also ignores nonsense words that have no meaning, and the observation that language learners can recognize words as words even though they have not yet learned their meanings. Words may also seem more psychologically real than other units, depending on cultural or educational background: for example, people who are literate in a writing system that demarcates language units by spacing (e.g., most alphabets) may more readily identify those units as words.