12/20/2023 0 Comments Upside down question mark textActually, if you think of it, the ? is more unnecessary in English than the ¿ is in Spanish, because as soon as you read a sentence beginning with “do”, “does”, “will”, etc., you know right away that a question is coming. The reason why ¿ is necessary in Spanish is the same reason why in English you have to invert the order of certain words when asking something. They’re just not being used (and it’s now accepted by the Academy) when writing short electronic messages in phones or the like, but they’re still compulsory when writing say, “normal” texts. So although we may watch the upside-down exclamation points and question marks fade into obscurity, perhaps one day we’ll see them find a new purpose.įirst, I don’t think it’s true to say that ¡ and ¿ are “moving into disuse”. Now that ¡ and ¿ are fading from Spanish, perhaps we can reclaim them as universal symbols of sarcasm! Barring that, there’s always the two of them combined, which I just learned about: ⸘ That’s a combination ¡ and ¿ that was originally meant to denote an intensely-asked question. If you don’t add a smiley to the end of a sentence, it’s impossible to communicate that you’re not being serious. Have you ever noticed that it’s nearly impossible on the internet to know if someone’s being sarcastic or completely serious? This is such a common phenomenon that it has a name: Poe’s Law. It didn’t catch on, unfortunately, and now in 2017 have that problem in spades. Well, back in 1668, it was suggested by several authors, poets and literary luminaries of the day that ¡ and ¿ be used in the English language as a way of denoting irony in a sentence. Why would you need ones at the beginning of the sentence, too? After all, they don’t actually add much to the sentence, do they? The exclamation point and question mark already denote what they’re supposed to. Thus, the ¡ and ¿ are slowly moving into disuse. That’s why the phones are smart – so we don’t have to be. We smartphone users are too lazy for that. But in Spanish, you’ve technically got to add the ¡ and ¿ at the beginning of the sentence, then speak what you want to say, then add another at the end. In most languages this isn’t such a big deal because you simply say your sentence, then when you’re finished you add your ! or ? or. It makes sense that I’d have to add the punctuation in the sentence myself. This doesn’t surprise me, and although I rarely use that function, I don’t expect the device to read my subtle inflections for punctuation. According to one commenter on the comic above, this is because when you use text-to-speech on smartphones it doesn’t recognize questions or exclamations. ❽id you know the inverted question mark and exclamation point were originally suggested for use in English? ¡It’s true!Īpparently, sadly, the upside-down question mark and exclamation point are slowly dying in the Spanish language.
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