• ActionHank@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I like the prefix marks. I wish we used them for all of our punctuation. They improve readability. Imagine if we removed the leading double-quote on our quoted lines.

    • stebo02@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      .I feel like this analogy doesn’t entirely work because you always know where the question starts, as that’s where the sentence startS. ,And a sentence always starts where the one before ends, ¿righT? .However I still see why you say it improves readabilitY. ¡I’m sure my comment is very readable right noW!

      • vithigar@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        31
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t mind the prefixed punctuation at all and don’t think it hurts readability in the slightest.

        Your inexplicable decision to capitalize the final letters is awful though, and definitely makes it less readable.

      • ActionHank@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        lol yeah I guess it depends on the length of the sentence and the context. Context is usually pretty clear for questions, and maybe exclamations are typically short enough that the ‘!’ is already visible anyways. Definitely wasn’t considering periods and commas in that list.

      • PoolloverNathan@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        .I feel like this analogy doesn’t entirely work because you always know where the question starts, as that’s where the sentence startS.

        Not always. For example (translated):

        And you, ¿how are you?

        • stebo02@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          You could write that as “And you? How are you?” so both parts of that sentence are still a question.

          However there are other examples where you’re right: “,That’s not going to happen, ¿or is it?”

          • akari@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I feel like the first example in your comment implies a different intonation than it’s equivalent in PooloverNathan’s comment. Also I feel the need to admit that I first read ¿)Nathan’s(? username as “Pool-over” as in “pull over”…

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Statement: Perhaps HK-47’s programmers had the right idea.

      Thoughtful: The Elcor’s manner of speech from Mass Effect would be particularly useful when communicating through text as well.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      65
      ·
      1 year ago

      In Spanish questions are phrased the same way as affirmations, when you are speaking the only difference is the intonation. Without a mark to say you are starting to read a question it’s possible that the meaning changes in the end which would be annoying. (Source: Portuguese is the same but has no inverted question mark, and sometimes it’s mighty annoying, especially with long questions)

      • DreamButt@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        36
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Funny enough English does this all the time:

        • That’s food.
        • That’s food!
        • That’s food?
        • That’s food?!
        • That’s food…

        All have different intonations and punctuation but are otherwise the same. Internet lingo does compensate for this somewhat but at least in “proper” form the above holds true for all kinds of situations

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          26
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          1 Food that is edible

          2 Tasty food

          3 Bad looking food

          4 Either happy or disgusted at what was just in your mouth

          5 Defending your cooking after it’s referred to as 1-4

        • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Imagine if you could ask questions like “James, Mary, and Jack went to the market last Saturday to buy a shovel, a black bag, and some gloves, to bury Karen’s corpse in the deep dark woods?”

          • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            No no no, James, Mary, and Jack went to the market last Saturday to buy a shovel, a black bag, and some flashlights, to bury Karen’s corpse in the deep dark woods

        • margaritox@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          English can do that too, but it’s not really a “proper” way of doing it. The proper way would be to say “is that food?”

          There are languages where the only way to pose a question is to change the intonation.

          • Littleborat@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            But doesn’t the intonation simply go up in the end? So it’s good enough to stumble over the ? in the end.

            • margaritox@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I honestly haven’t paid attention where it starts going up. But I always thought that doing the two “?”s in Spanish was pretty clever for that reason.

      • octoperson@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        22
        ·
        1 year ago

        Portuguese is the same but has no inverted question mark, and sometimes it’s mighty annoying,

        ¿What if you just used them anyway?
        ¡Problem solved!

      • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        É de facto irritante. Nada como estar na escola e um prof pede para ler. Estás calmamente a ler o texto e de repente tens de forçar a porcaria da entoação para sobrecompensar o facto de que não reparaste que era uma pergunta

      • magnetosphere@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 year ago

        This can’t be right. It’s far too simple and logical. I’m a native English speaker, and I’m used to grammar that’s nonsensical and inconsistent.

      • araozu@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        In spanish questions intonation changes occur only on the last word(s), not the whole sentence. I’m not a linguistic, but I think it’s so you can be sure a sentence is a question from the start.

        When reading english sometimes I assume a sentence is an affirmation until I see the question mark, and then I have to reinterpret the sentence. I wonder how it is for native english speakers. Do they assume nothing until the sentence is finished?

        • lorty@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          You are indeed right, my explanation was poor. But for other languages it is very common to get surprised at the end of sentences, yes.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          In English most questions stay flat and only raises the pitch on the last syllable, if any. In Spanish we can raise the pitch on the first word and stay flat for the rest of the question. That’s what’s useful about the ¿

          • araozu@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Solo me fijé en la ultima palabra, no en la primera. Tal vez nunca me di cuenta que si cambia

        • curiosityLynx@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          In spanish questions intonation changes occur only on the last word(s), not the whole sentence. I’m not a linguistic, but I think it’s so you can be sure a sentence is a question from the start.

          That might be the case in the dialect you’re familiar with, but “¿Me dijiste que no te moleste?” has a different intonation to “Me dijiste que no te moleste.” in my Spanish (starting from “dijiste”).

          As for English, questions normally start either with a question word or a (auxiliary) verb, while affirmations normally start with the subject. See “You told me not to bother you.” vs. “Did you tell me not to bother you?”. Using just intonation is possible (“You told me not to bother you?!??”), but when in writing, it’s usually formatted in a way that highlights it because it usually indicates outrage/disbelief.

          • araozu@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Interesting. Afaik what determines a question is a higher pitch, so in your sentence I wouldn’t think of the sentence as a question until I hear the intonation of the last word.

            Like, toda la oracion puede tener cualquier tono, pero si la última palabra tiene un tono mas agudo (molesteee en vez de moleste) recien cuenta como pregunta.

            Me puse a pensar y escuchar conversaciones, fijandome si el tono cambia siempre en la ultima palabra, o en algun otro lado, y en donde vivo (casi) siempre el tono cambia en la ultima palabra, incluso solo la ultima silaba.

            Me pregunto si de donde eres toda la oracion (o, desde “dijiste”) el tono es más agudo, o si usan otra forma para diferenciar?

            • curiosityLynx@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              The higher pitch for the entire sentence is another option in my Spanish, but indicates outrage.

              The version where you hear it’s supposed to be a question from the word “dijiste” is more of a request for information, like if your mom yelled something and you’re not sure if she said “No me molestes” or “No te sorpreses” or something else that sounds vaguely similar or if she was actually yelling at a fly that was going on her nerves.

              The sentence overall becomes more melodic, with the stressed syllables getting a higher pitch and more defined stress.

  • victron@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    (Latin American fellow) At first I thought this was an Australia-style joke, because there are Spanish speaking countries in both hemispheres. Yep, I can overthink stuff and still be an idiot lol

  • guajojo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    To be fair that rule is almost lost, only the autocorrect still adds the initial ?

    • Hazewind@artemis.camp
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Just like how in Dutch the second quotation mark is supposed to be on the bottom. But I don’t even know how to do that on the computer.

      • joranvar@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The opening quotation marks should be on the bottom, but it’s been a while since I wrote them that way. Luckily, the wiki page (in Dutch) shows how they can be entered in three common OSes (see: unicode), so I’ll try my best to revive the correct usage again.

        Also, I don’t think it is considered incorrect to use top quotation marks on a computer any longer.