Why not periods? Why doesn’t every sentence in Spanish that isn’t a question or exclamation start with a period floating in the sky?
Why not periods? Why doesn’t every sentence in Spanish that isn’t a question or exclamation start with a period floating in the sky?
It’s because Spanish sentence structure is different from English. In Spanish the sentences “Can I tell you? (¿Te lo puedo decir?) and “I can tell you.” (Te lo puedo decir.) are formed the same way. The initial punctuation lets the reader know that the sentence is a question or exclamation or not so they can parse the sentence properly from the start.
Well now I have to wonder why other languages don’t do the front punctuation thing. It would be just as helpful in English as it is in Spanish to know a sentence is a question before getting to the end of it. Scrambling to lift your voice into a question you’ve been reading as a statement until you see the question mark at the end is awkward. lol
I’d argue this is exactly why it’s not necessary on English; what makes it a question tends to be the inflection at the very end so no real need for a warning way at the beginning.
Also, while English certainly can form questions that are identical to statements (“They fly now?” “They fly now.”), it’s not necessary or even the most common way. More of the burden for clear communication can be left to the writer.
English manages the exact same thing without the leading punctuation.
English changes the order of the words of the sentence. Spanish uses punctuation marks. It’s just differences in languages. Personally I appreciate them since it helps me read Spanish quicker with fewer parsing errors.
“How would I find out?”
Yes, English uses word order to define grammar in many more sentences than Spanish, but not exclusively.
That’s not a direct comparison.
vs
English, you mean that notoriously easy to parse and learn language that has rules so obscure that native speakers don’t even realize they’re adhering to them? Tell that to my Irish old small lovely mother.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/adjectives-order