well, ok, replace,

$inner =~ /^(\w+)/
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with:

$inner =~ /^(\S+)/
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and we get:

print "@firsties\n";
#first greek alpha beta don't can't won't Kindergärten
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Good point.
\w means the characters that can be used within a Perl identifier [0-9_A-Za-z]
Sometimes, as in this case, \S (not a space) is useful.