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Romance Languages and Double Punctuation | ||
Tags: Punctuation | Romance Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6126 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes  22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 1 of 15 07 October 2009 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Are there any other Romance languages or dialects that use the double question marks (¿?) and exclamation marks (¡!) besides Spanish? What is the etymology for this doubling? Edited by JW on 07 October 2009 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5703 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 15 08 October 2009 at 1:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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They were used in Catalan until the 1990s and I think in Galician. The up-side down punctuation was decreed into existence by the Real Academia Española in the mid-18th century.
Quasi-related publication from the RAE I thought interesting: La Ortografía de la Real Academia 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kerateo Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5650 days ago 112 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 15 08 October 2009 at 4:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, the Real Academia is the only thing that stands between the double marks and their disappearance, never seen a text message with it (of course :) ), also disappearing in letters, emails and corporate memos. Well the Real Academia and Microsoft Word are the only defendants..
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6126 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 4 of 15 08 October 2009 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
To me they really interrupt the flow of writing. Every time I use a question mark or exclamation mark I have to then say to myself, oh yeah, where does the beginning one go--and sometimes it's a bit difficult to determine. Do native speakers have to go through that process as well or is it more intuitive?
That's an interesting reference. Thanks for sharing it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7019 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 15 08 October 2009 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is fairly intuitive but sometimes you do have to think twice! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 6 of 15 10 October 2009 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I like them. I think they really spice up the language. And they're good for suspense.
"¿" says "Ooh, something mysterious is coming up...¿what could it be?" "¡" says "Ooh, something exciting is coming up...¡get ready for some action!" 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6126 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 7 of 15 10 October 2009 at 1:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I also initially liked them when I first started learning Spanish as they were something exotic and unique but having to use them in writing makes them seem utterly superfluous. Just an extra unnecessary step in writing--familiarity breeds contempt... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rggg Heptaglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6329 days ago 373 posts - 426 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Malay Studies: Romanian, Catalan, Greek, German, Swedish | Message 8 of 15 27 October 2009 at 2:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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My Brazilian friend hates them =)...... Me? I really like them .... ok, I admit I'm not sure if I've used them in the Spanish thread =) ....but I don't think they interrupt the flow of writing or anything, it's just a tiny little mark .... on the contrary, I think they add or give an extra something, helping the reader to prepare his/her intonation since the very beginning of a long question or exclamation when reading out loud.
Texting on the cell phone? .... that's entirely another matter, most people just want to write less and less characters and don't even care about spelling, much less about punctuation marks. Edited by rggg on 29 October 2009 at 3:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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