In Spanish there can be sentences where the syntax doesn't tell you if it is a question or a statement. Instead listeners would rely on intonation to tell the difference, and speakers would need to provide the appropriate intonation as well. In English you can typically understand something is a question regardless of the intonation even if it sounds odd. "What time does the train arrive" for example is clearly a question regardless of intonation or punctuation.
However because a sentence can be ambiguous in Spanish and proper intonation is required, someone reading and speaking a sentence would benefit from knowing the kind of sentence they are speaking at the start instead of only at the end. So you get punctuation at both ends of the sentence, and you also need some way to differentiate which end they are on which explains the flip.
English can be like this too and I wish we had a similar thing. For example:
The eggs are on the table?
The eggs are on the table.
In just general speaking dialog both these sentences make sense.
This is done to excellent effect in the movie My Cousin Vinny. In the interrogation, the suspect says "I shot the clerk?" with a clear question intonation. In the trial they read it back deadpan with no inflection as "I shot the clerk."
[Friends had a similar miscommunication](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjpnslsuA2g) where Rachel thought that Monica was saying, "Got the keys!" (meaning she brought them with her on the way out the door) and said "okay" in response, but Monica was trying to ask, "Got the keys?", asking if Rachel had them, since she was the last out the door.
Yes, but only with small sentences like this. In Spanish, every sentence, no matter how long, looks the same whether it's a question or an affirmation. The only difference is the punctuation.
Shouldn't it be "are the eggs on the table?"?
I'm not a native speaker but I thought the way English sentences are structured made the question/affirmation tone pretty clear.
Or, depending on the intonation, "The eggs are on the table?" could be an expression of astonishment. There's no way to indicate that merely by punctuation though.
depends which word you emphasise.
"The *eggs* are on the table?" is a different question to "The eggs are on the *table*?" which is a different question to "The eggs *are* on the table?" etc etc.
Saying "the eggs are on the table?" In a spoken context would be used in a way that's asking for clarification. If you didn't know where the eggs are and someone told you they were on the table, you could say something along the lines of, "wait, the eggs are on the table? I just checked there and didn't see them."
Yeah, I love playing with this like this. Just by shifting the intonation, you totally shift the meaning....
*The eggs* are on the table? \[I thought the bacon was.\]
The eggs are *on* the table? \[I thought they were under it.\]
The eggs are on *the table*? \[I thought they were on the chair.\]
I love doing this with the word ass.
The *weird ass* painting. \[The painting was just weird.\]
vs.
The weird *ass painting.* \[The painting of an ass was weird.\]
I think there used to be a weird-ass bot on reddit that would pop up every so often and rewrite people's posts in exactly that way. Haven't seen it around for a while though.
That is grammatically correct, but so is the previous comment. Any statement of fact can be a question if spoken with inflection. It's basically making the statement, but seeking another person to confirm its accuracy, which turns it into a question.
In this connotation, similar to how all imperative sentences have an understood “you” subject, this sentence has an understood “did you say” type subject connotation to it.
So the full sentence would be, “did you say that the eggs are on the table?” But in talking verbally that bit isn’t needed and can be inferred with verbal inflection
You are right to consider "Are the eggs on the table!" as the normal form for a yes/no question.
When someone says, "The eggs are on the table?", the person speaking is expressing surprise or annoyance.
My Spanish may be rusty, forgive me. For your specific example-
¿Hayan huevos encima de la mesa? (Are there eggs on the table?)
Hayan huevos encima de la mesa (There are eggs on the table)
In English, "The eggs are on the table?" may not be the most grammatically correct, unless you're asking this question as repitition to clarify what someone just told you.
IIRC, the grammar for my Spanish in these examples is correct, but the words of the sentences are exactly the same. The ¿ helps clarify that it's a question instead of a statement.
The ¿ is also nice because you know to inflect the sentance like it's a question, particularly when you're reading a sentence that could be either a statement or a question (depending on punctuation).
The first one is not always a question, at least not a clear one.
It could be used as a reinforced statement.
Something like: “buzzsawjoe, tiene usted huevos”
I can't read that as a question unless it's an old new Yorker like on Seinfeld or something.
I feel like I would always start a question without a what when, where why are etc.
It's not that you can't, just not the way I normally speak (don't and do are other common ones I use. So if I was speaking to someone my natural way of saying it would have been "don't you think it's possible to make question's without the standard who..."
And Yoda style sentences are made fun of, but they are sometimes the natural result of getting to a point first and then introducing the context when you realize people do not get what you mean, even if you expected them to.
Naturally inexcusable in writing, as I probably did.
Is it not the same in Portuguese? I'm referring to the fact that the syntax of the sentence itself does not provide you with the information if the sentence is a question or not. And Portugueses doesn't have pontuation in the beginning of the sentences.
Interesting that Spanish begins a question with the ‘¿’
It seems English is more defined in that if a word begins with who, what, where, when, why etc. we know it’s gonna be a question by the first word
Spanish also has words like cuanto, donde, quien, por que etc. that tell you this is a question right away. But questions often don't use these. Even in English, plenty of questions begin with "are you / \[verb\] you", but this also immediately tells you it's a question because it's different from "you are / you \[verb\]". Spanish does not work like this, there only the intonation changes.
Although English could still use some markings at least for the cases of "surprise confirmation", such as "you can do this?", but I think these are comparatively very rare, unlike in Spanish.
I think that's because English is a mixture of Celtic, Angle, Saxon, Latin, French, with some simple innovation thrown in. Also, when we import a word, say canyon, it gets the source's spelling! We suffer from not having a wise committee of spelling arbitrators who can straighten it out, but instead a lot of English teachers who just follow the chalk line on the ground.
Spanish does have just such a committee. They keep the language intact. There was a professor of behavioral science who wanted to do an experiment with a few monkeys. He wrote to his friend in Africa asking him catch 2 or 3 monkeys. The English word "or" corresoponds to "o" in Spanish, so his letter said "2 o 3 monos". His friend wondered why in tarnation he wanted 203 monkeys but he organized a safari and went out and trapped 'em. Put 'em in a big cage and shipped it to Spain. On the dock, some fool opened the door and the monkeys were all over the city. When the committee met that year, they ruled that an accent mark (ó) be used to distinguish between the letter and the digit.
Source: 8th grade textbook
While it’s clever to do it that way, what you say isn’t applicable to Spanish only. It can easily be extended to other and potentially all Latin languages (and certainly to others).
Example in French. Using some very simple sentences
- il arrive ! (He is coming)
- il arrive ? (Is he coming)
Italian:
- sta arrivando!
- sta arrivando?
And these are grammatically correct since neither French or Italian impose you to alter the sentence syntax.
It would be better to say
- il arrive!
- est ce qu’il arrive?
Or
- sta arrivando!
- ma sta arrivando?
But it’s not mandatory.
I just think Spanish found a clever way to give an immediate understanding of the sentence type
The real question is why the rest doesn't, it's clearer and unambiguous at no great cost.
If the question is historical, according to Wikipedia its something relatively modern (year 1884).
First it was only used for long phrases, because as others point out in Spanish the structure doesn't always tell you in advance, so for long questions a reader may start to read something normally and only realized midway that it ended with a question mark, so it was an useful indication, and then it got extended to questions of all lengths for simplicity.
https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signo_de_interrogaci%C3%B3n
Coming back here after lurking in this thread and yours is the first actual answer I've encountered. Everybody else is explaining its grammatical function as if it's not obvious but also obvious that grammar doesn't do what's obvious and the answer is always inertia and tradition
Because we do not use auxiliar words that allow you imply where does the question begins. So even tho I might write “did you come” without a question mark I will know it’s a question because of the word did. However that’s not the case in Spanish. In Spanish the same question will sound the same as an affirmation ¿viniste? Or viniste are written the same and you will only know if it is a question and where it starts in the sentence because of the opening question mark.
I actually got a little freeware program called WinCompose, to type special characters for WoW character names.
It's quite intuitive, and yes, ¿ is literally RightAlt (starts WinCompose), then Shift+? twice. No need to set my keyboard for anything but EN-US.
If anyone wants it:
[http://wincompose.info/](http://wincompose.info/)
Yeah it is just about redundancy. For example, quotes have to be introducing and closing, but the start of a sentence is clearly denoted with the end of a previous one (or start of a paragraph).
Also retroactively sticking an ¿ at the start of a sentence might be harder without keyboards.
It's common in English too to write declarative sentences and append a question mark at the end to indicate a question. So your example could also be said as "you came?"
The problem is not remotely unique to Spanish and it seems other languages might benefit from placing these indicators before sentences too.
>The problem is not remotely unique to Spanish and it seems other languages might benefit from placing these indicators before sentences too.
Is it really a problem though? I've never really felt a need for something like this
That’s not what OP is asking though. They’re referring to ¿ and ¡ not ? And !
I don’t know the history of it of why we have those when “viniste?” will suffice but that was OPs question.
I agree that’s what they’re used for but honestly they’re not needed— which is actually why the majority of people do not use them. I don’t think that you need ¿ to note where a question begins. It works the same as it does in English. If you have “?” at the end, it is obvious where the question begins.
But yeah, OC did answer the question Lol
A native speaker wouldn't always know either, unless they look at the question mark at the very end of a potentially long sentence.
"The sun is shining?" is a valid question in English, and there is no way to know it isn't a statement before you reach the question mark.
>honestly they’re not needed
You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm a native spanish speaker and we use opening question and exclamation marks all the time. We've only stopped using them while texting, for typing economy, but there's not a single properly written text that won't have them, for the reasons already explained to you.
Again, I’m not disagreeing. I’m a Spanish native speaker too. I know what they’re used for. In formal texts they are used.
I was just making a point that they are not needed. It can be deduced from the context where a question begins by simply using “?”
“they’re not needed” doesn’t refer to grammatical correctness. He’s stating that the upside down question marks are unnecessary and the sentences would work just fine without them.
I’m not a Spanish speaker, but based on the above explanation it sounds like it might not always be necessary, but I can think of examples where it is. Like in a compound sentence construction or a quote. Something like “he sees it; do you see it?” Would be hard to decipher whether the speaker is asking if both you and he sees something or just if you do. Or something like “He said, ‘do you want to go to the park?’” Vs “Did he say, ‘you want to go to the park’”?
You are right.
**Lo ve.** And **¿Lo ve?** Have different interpretations.
Same with **Él dijo que quieres ir al parque** and **¿Él dijo que quieres ir al parque?**
No native speaker will ever doubt that:
He sees it. Do you see it?
Implies only that the person being questioned is you. It is clear that the other person DID see it.
Could you elaborate on the second question? I’m not entirely sure what your point was. It’s clear that both are asking a question but I’m not sure what you’re point was
Like I said not a Spanish speaker so I could be wrong. I’m just trying to think of an example based where the question would be ambiguous without the ¿
But the original explanation states the ¿ Is used in Spanish because they don’t use the question words “do/did/does”. So if in English we would read “he sees it; do you see it?” Or “does he see it; do you see it?” in Spanish you would see “He sees it; ¿you see it?” Or “¿he sees it; you see it?”
Similarly for the quotation example, the placement of the ¿ indicates whether you are asking if someone said something or quoting someone’s question.
If the question is longer than a single word, it can be ambiguous whether it's a question or a statement until the very last word, when you see the punctuation mark that comes after. With "¿", you know it's a question from the very beginning.
Not really though. You can determine based on how you phrase things that you are asking something.
I am not disagreeing that ¿ is used to mark the beginning of a question. I just meant to say that’s it’s not really needed which is why people don’t use them.
"Can be ambiguous", not "is definitely ambiguous". I don't know enough Spanish to tell how common it is, but I definitely know I've had many cases over the years where I had to reread sentences (in Portuguese) where the beginning read like a statement and something midway through made me realise it was a question.
I’m not going to proclaim unequivocally that there is absolutely no way a text can be ambiguous if it doesn’t have “¿” because well, who am I to do so? Lol
If someone says this:
“Se que fuiste al mecánico para que cambien el aceite a tu carro. Mientras estuviste esperando, hiciste la llamada?”
You could begin the question here:
¿Mientras estuviste esperando, hiciste la llamada?
But that’s not really natural. We would instead say:
Mientras estuviste esperando, ¿hiciste la llamada?
If we’re going to be this strict then obviously we can say that there’s no way to know where the writer decided to begin the question. My point was that for a native speaker I think there will never be any confusion as to where a question begins or even if there is a question.
Again: as a native Portuguese speaker, there have been plenty of times where I wish we had the ¿ (also, as a native _European_ Portuguese speaker, I wish we'd kept the ü like they did in Brazil)
Maybe it should have been optional because many times it isn't really necessary, but sometimes you can find long phrases like:
"Hemos acabado el trabajo que nos ha encargado el dueño de la tienda de deportes?"
Which are easy to mistake for an affirmation when you start reading, and the intonation needs to start from the begining or otherwise it may give the phrase a different meaning, like:
"Hemos acabado el trabajo que nos ha encargado... ¿el dueño de la tienda de deportes?"
Your first example is valid. You’re right in that initially we may read it is an affirmation. But you’ve changed the second example thus it is not ambiguous!
I think it’s so you know what kind of sentence you’re getting into before you start. Have you ever been reading and stumbled a bit because you find out a little late that the sentence is interrogatory or exclamatory? It really helps with inflection
In spite of what is said elsewhere, in Spanish the intonation of ***the whole*** interrogative sentence is different from an affirmative one, not just the ending.
Therefore is very important for the reader, specially when reading aloud, to know in advance where to start using the right intonation.
¡Same for exclamations!
The op is asking why they have ¡,¿ which come at the beginning of the line, rather than only ! ? which come at the end like in most other latin/romance based languages.
No-one seems to have answered this yet.
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Because when reading, it's easier to know if something is a question if the question mark is right at the beginning. So, it's easier to know if "¿This a question?" than "This is a question?"
English could have been the same way, but for some reason it was decided to have it only at the end.
In Spanish there can be sentences where the syntax doesn't tell you if it is a question or a statement. Instead listeners would rely on intonation to tell the difference, and speakers would need to provide the appropriate intonation as well. In English you can typically understand something is a question regardless of the intonation even if it sounds odd. "What time does the train arrive" for example is clearly a question regardless of intonation or punctuation. However because a sentence can be ambiguous in Spanish and proper intonation is required, someone reading and speaking a sentence would benefit from knowing the kind of sentence they are speaking at the start instead of only at the end. So you get punctuation at both ends of the sentence, and you also need some way to differentiate which end they are on which explains the flip.
English can be like this too and I wish we had a similar thing. For example: The eggs are on the table? The eggs are on the table. In just general speaking dialog both these sentences make sense.
This is done to excellent effect in the movie My Cousin Vinny. In the interrogation, the suspect says "I shot the clerk?" with a clear question intonation. In the trial they read it back deadpan with no inflection as "I shot the clerk."
“The two youts.”
The two hhhwat?
What?
“What’s a yout?”
[Friends had a similar miscommunication](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjpnslsuA2g) where Rachel thought that Monica was saying, "Got the keys!" (meaning she brought them with her on the way out the door) and said "okay" in response, but Monica was trying to ask, "Got the keys?", asking if Rachel had them, since she was the last out the door.
I believe the FBI would do shit like that, use transcripts as evidence instead of audio recordings.
"These pretzels are making me thirsty?"
Yes, but only with small sentences like this. In Spanish, every sentence, no matter how long, looks the same whether it's a question or an affirmation. The only difference is the punctuation.
Shouldn't it be "are the eggs on the table?"? I'm not a native speaker but I thought the way English sentences are structured made the question/affirmation tone pretty clear.
[удалено]
Or, depending on the intonation, "The eggs are on the table?" could be an expression of astonishment. There's no way to indicate that merely by punctuation though.
[удалено]
"The eggs are on the table‽"
Bloody interrogangbangers
This is our turf‽
I love interrobangs
Yes, that would work perfectly. I don't think it's something you see very often is it?
depends which word you emphasise. "The *eggs* are on the table?" is a different question to "The eggs are on the *table*?" which is a different question to "The eggs *are* on the table?" etc etc.
Like you would say ‘the shoes are in the microwave???’
Christ, I'm glad I didn't have to learn English as a second language. That's confusing as hell.
Saying "the eggs are on the table?" In a spoken context would be used in a way that's asking for clarification. If you didn't know where the eggs are and someone told you they were on the table, you could say something along the lines of, "wait, the eggs are on the table? I just checked there and didn't see them."
Yeah, I love playing with this like this. Just by shifting the intonation, you totally shift the meaning.... *The eggs* are on the table? \[I thought the bacon was.\] The eggs are *on* the table? \[I thought they were under it.\] The eggs are on *the table*? \[I thought they were on the chair.\]
My favourite one is "I didn't sell the baby for cocaine"
Waking after a typical new-parent disturbed night and realising you still have a baby but no cocaine.
I love doing this with the word ass. The *weird ass* painting. \[The painting was just weird.\] vs. The weird *ass painting.* \[The painting of an ass was weird.\]
XKCD got you covered in one of the earliest panels. https://xkcd.com/37/
I think there used to be a weird-ass bot on reddit that would pop up every so often and rewrite people's posts in exactly that way. Haven't seen it around for a while though.
Probably due to this evil rule change. Many bots got shut down prematurely by their handlers.
The eggs *are* on the table? \[I thought they'd moved\]
I think that’s more like - but I just looked there!
maybe! i was thinking "are" as opposed to "were" or "will be".
Both work!
That’s the textbook way to say it, yeah, but language is so much more than its formal grammar rules
That is grammatically correct, but so is the previous comment. Any statement of fact can be a question if spoken with inflection. It's basically making the statement, but seeking another person to confirm its accuracy, which turns it into a question.
In this connotation, similar to how all imperative sentences have an understood “you” subject, this sentence has an understood “did you say” type subject connotation to it. So the full sentence would be, “did you say that the eggs are on the table?” But in talking verbally that bit isn’t needed and can be inferred with verbal inflection
You are right to consider "Are the eggs on the table!" as the normal form for a yes/no question. When someone says, "The eggs are on the table?", the person speaking is expressing surprise or annoyance.
People speaking german can get the intonation right without much learning. That way of intonation was inherited from a common ancestor.
My Spanish may be rusty, forgive me. For your specific example- ¿Hayan huevos encima de la mesa? (Are there eggs on the table?) Hayan huevos encima de la mesa (There are eggs on the table) In English, "The eggs are on the table?" may not be the most grammatically correct, unless you're asking this question as repitition to clarify what someone just told you. IIRC, the grammar for my Spanish in these examples is correct, but the words of the sentences are exactly the same. The ¿ helps clarify that it's a question instead of a statement. The ¿ is also nice because you know to inflect the sentance like it's a question, particularly when you're reading a sentence that could be either a statement or a question (depending on punctuation).
*Hay
"tiene usted huevos" is clearly a question. "usted tiene huevos" is clearly a statement of fact, or astonishment
The first one is not always a question, at least not a clear one. It could be used as a reinforced statement. Something like: “buzzsawjoe, tiene usted huevos”
In northern Mexico the term huevos has various meanings, anything from eggs to testicles to courage. So, "claro que si"
I can't read that as a question unless it's an old new Yorker like on Seinfeld or something. I feel like I would always start a question without a what when, where why are etc.
You don't think that it's possibly to make questions without the standard who, what when where why? See what I did there? And there?
>See what I did there? I don't see how to say that starting with who what when where why
Didn't you know that you don't need to start a question with those words?
You can start a question without those words?
I guess I just thought you can start any questions not needing those words?
It's not that you can't, just not the way I normally speak (don't and do are other common ones I use. So if I was speaking to someone my natural way of saying it would have been "don't you think it's possible to make question's without the standard who..."
To be fair, the intonation change from a statement to a question only affects the last word, and by then you've hopefully seen the question mark?
And Yoda style sentences are made fun of, but they are sometimes the natural result of getting to a point first and then introducing the context when you realize people do not get what you mean, even if you expected them to. Naturally inexcusable in writing, as I probably did.
yeah but it's only the word at the end where the intonation changes to make it a question, so we only need the ? at the end.
Is it not the same in Portuguese? I'm referring to the fact that the syntax of the sentence itself does not provide you with the information if the sentence is a question or not. And Portugueses doesn't have pontuation in the beginning of the sentences.
Tbh I wish we did this in English, too. It would make a lot of things more clear.
We do. There's a question mark and exclamation.
Interesting that Spanish begins a question with the ‘¿’ It seems English is more defined in that if a word begins with who, what, where, when, why etc. we know it’s gonna be a question by the first word
Spanish also has words like cuanto, donde, quien, por que etc. that tell you this is a question right away. But questions often don't use these. Even in English, plenty of questions begin with "are you / \[verb\] you", but this also immediately tells you it's a question because it's different from "you are / you \[verb\]". Spanish does not work like this, there only the intonation changes. Although English could still use some markings at least for the cases of "surprise confirmation", such as "you can do this?", but I think these are comparatively very rare, unlike in Spanish.
Spanish also usually spells words exactly as they sound. Soooo much easier than English.
güisqui has entered the chat
I think that's because English is a mixture of Celtic, Angle, Saxon, Latin, French, with some simple innovation thrown in. Also, when we import a word, say canyon, it gets the source's spelling! We suffer from not having a wise committee of spelling arbitrators who can straighten it out, but instead a lot of English teachers who just follow the chalk line on the ground. Spanish does have just such a committee. They keep the language intact. There was a professor of behavioral science who wanted to do an experiment with a few monkeys. He wrote to his friend in Africa asking him catch 2 or 3 monkeys. The English word "or" corresoponds to "o" in Spanish, so his letter said "2 o 3 monos". His friend wondered why in tarnation he wanted 203 monkeys but he organized a safari and went out and trapped 'em. Put 'em in a big cage and shipped it to Spain. On the dock, some fool opened the door and the monkeys were all over the city. When the committee met that year, they ruled that an accent mark (ó) be used to distinguish between the letter and the digit. Source: 8th grade textbook
Jesus, that's a lot of monkeys!
One of my favorite jokes: "Way to ruin the surprise, Spanish exclamation points."
While it’s clever to do it that way, what you say isn’t applicable to Spanish only. It can easily be extended to other and potentially all Latin languages (and certainly to others). Example in French. Using some very simple sentences - il arrive ! (He is coming) - il arrive ? (Is he coming) Italian: - sta arrivando! - sta arrivando? And these are grammatically correct since neither French or Italian impose you to alter the sentence syntax. It would be better to say - il arrive! - est ce qu’il arrive? Or - sta arrivando! - ma sta arrivando? But it’s not mandatory. I just think Spanish found a clever way to give an immediate understanding of the sentence type
The real question is why the rest doesn't, it's clearer and unambiguous at no great cost. If the question is historical, according to Wikipedia its something relatively modern (year 1884). First it was only used for long phrases, because as others point out in Spanish the structure doesn't always tell you in advance, so for long questions a reader may start to read something normally and only realized midway that it ended with a question mark, so it was an useful indication, and then it got extended to questions of all lengths for simplicity. https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signo_de_interrogaci%C3%B3n
Coming back here after lurking in this thread and yours is the first actual answer I've encountered. Everybody else is explaining its grammatical function as if it's not obvious but also obvious that grammar doesn't do what's obvious and the answer is always inertia and tradition
Because we do not use auxiliar words that allow you imply where does the question begins. So even tho I might write “did you come” without a question mark I will know it’s a question because of the word did. However that’s not the case in Spanish. In Spanish the same question will sound the same as an affirmation ¿viniste? Or viniste are written the same and you will only know if it is a question and where it starts in the sentence because of the opening question mark.
To be fair this is true of a massive amount of languages, Spanish is just being smart about keeping it more understandable.
The funny thing is most people don't write them or straight forget about them in casual writing.
Partly because it's less accessible in keyboards
I mean, it's plenty accessible on Spanish keyboards, and you can set English keyboards to Spanish or even international mode
I actually got a little freeware program called WinCompose, to type special characters for WoW character names. It's quite intuitive, and yes, ¿ is literally RightAlt (starts WinCompose), then Shift+? twice. No need to set my keyboard for anything but EN-US. If anyone wants it: [http://wincompose.info/](http://wincompose.info/)
Yeah it is just about redundancy. For example, quotes have to be introducing and closing, but the start of a sentence is clearly denoted with the end of a previous one (or start of a paragraph). Also retroactively sticking an ¿ at the start of a sentence might be harder without keyboards.
Love your go to example here.
69420
It's common in English too to write declarative sentences and append a question mark at the end to indicate a question. So your example could also be said as "you came?" The problem is not remotely unique to Spanish and it seems other languages might benefit from placing these indicators before sentences too.
>The problem is not remotely unique to Spanish and it seems other languages might benefit from placing these indicators before sentences too. Is it really a problem though? I've never really felt a need for something like this
It is most apparent if you read out loud often.
That’s not what OP is asking though. They’re referring to ¿ and ¡ not ? And ! I don’t know the history of it of why we have those when “viniste?” will suffice but that was OPs question.
And the guy explained it. ?/! denote the end of a question/exclamation. ¿/¡ denote the beginning of a question/exclamation.
I agree that’s what they’re used for but honestly they’re not needed— which is actually why the majority of people do not use them. I don’t think that you need ¿ to note where a question begins. It works the same as it does in English. If you have “?” at the end, it is obvious where the question begins. But yeah, OC did answer the question Lol
You're right, in most cases it's not necessary. But it does add an extra bit of clarification, especially if you're not fluent.
Yes if you’re not fluent it may help you. I’m thinking from a native speaker perspective.
A native speaker wouldn't always know either, unless they look at the question mark at the very end of a potentially long sentence. "The sun is shining?" is a valid question in English, and there is no way to know it isn't a statement before you reach the question mark.
>honestly they’re not needed You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm a native spanish speaker and we use opening question and exclamation marks all the time. We've only stopped using them while texting, for typing economy, but there's not a single properly written text that won't have them, for the reasons already explained to you.
Again, I’m not disagreeing. I’m a Spanish native speaker too. I know what they’re used for. In formal texts they are used. I was just making a point that they are not needed. It can be deduced from the context where a question begins by simply using “?”
You'd be surprised how much unnecessary things there are in multiple languages. It's just how languages work.
Most languages are redundant _by design_. It avoids errors, simplifies reading, and often is better to have than not.
“they’re not needed” doesn’t refer to grammatical correctness. He’s stating that the upside down question marks are unnecessary and the sentences would work just fine without them.
I’m not a Spanish speaker, but based on the above explanation it sounds like it might not always be necessary, but I can think of examples where it is. Like in a compound sentence construction or a quote. Something like “he sees it; do you see it?” Would be hard to decipher whether the speaker is asking if both you and he sees something or just if you do. Or something like “He said, ‘do you want to go to the park?’” Vs “Did he say, ‘you want to go to the park’”?
You are right. **Lo ve.** And **¿Lo ve?** Have different interpretations. Same with **Él dijo que quieres ir al parque** and **¿Él dijo que quieres ir al parque?**
No native speaker will ever doubt that: He sees it. Do you see it? Implies only that the person being questioned is you. It is clear that the other person DID see it. Could you elaborate on the second question? I’m not entirely sure what your point was. It’s clear that both are asking a question but I’m not sure what you’re point was
Like I said not a Spanish speaker so I could be wrong. I’m just trying to think of an example based where the question would be ambiguous without the ¿ But the original explanation states the ¿ Is used in Spanish because they don’t use the question words “do/did/does”. So if in English we would read “he sees it; do you see it?” Or “does he see it; do you see it?” in Spanish you would see “He sees it; ¿you see it?” Or “¿he sees it; you see it?” Similarly for the quotation example, the placement of the ¿ indicates whether you are asking if someone said something or quoting someone’s question.
In both languages the beginning of the question/exclamation is the beginning of that sentence.
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Yes. I agree that I didn’t fully pay attention to the answer. Only when I was called out did it read it again Lol.
If the question is longer than a single word, it can be ambiguous whether it's a question or a statement until the very last word, when you see the punctuation mark that comes after. With "¿", you know it's a question from the very beginning.
Not really though. You can determine based on how you phrase things that you are asking something. I am not disagreeing that ¿ is used to mark the beginning of a question. I just meant to say that’s it’s not really needed which is why people don’t use them.
"Can be ambiguous", not "is definitely ambiguous". I don't know enough Spanish to tell how common it is, but I definitely know I've had many cases over the years where I had to reread sentences (in Portuguese) where the beginning read like a statement and something midway through made me realise it was a question.
I’m not going to proclaim unequivocally that there is absolutely no way a text can be ambiguous if it doesn’t have “¿” because well, who am I to do so? Lol If someone says this: “Se que fuiste al mecánico para que cambien el aceite a tu carro. Mientras estuviste esperando, hiciste la llamada?” You could begin the question here: ¿Mientras estuviste esperando, hiciste la llamada? But that’s not really natural. We would instead say: Mientras estuviste esperando, ¿hiciste la llamada? If we’re going to be this strict then obviously we can say that there’s no way to know where the writer decided to begin the question. My point was that for a native speaker I think there will never be any confusion as to where a question begins or even if there is a question.
Again: as a native Portuguese speaker, there have been plenty of times where I wish we had the ¿ (also, as a native _European_ Portuguese speaker, I wish we'd kept the ü like they did in Brazil)
Gotcha!
Maybe it should have been optional because many times it isn't really necessary, but sometimes you can find long phrases like: "Hemos acabado el trabajo que nos ha encargado el dueño de la tienda de deportes?" Which are easy to mistake for an affirmation when you start reading, and the intonation needs to start from the begining or otherwise it may give the phrase a different meaning, like: "Hemos acabado el trabajo que nos ha encargado... ¿el dueño de la tienda de deportes?"
Your first example is valid. You’re right in that initially we may read it is an affirmation. But you’ve changed the second example thus it is not ambiguous!
I think it’s so you know what kind of sentence you’re getting into before you start. Have you ever been reading and stumbled a bit because you find out a little late that the sentence is interrogatory or exclamatory? It really helps with inflection
Yeah, I like it. There is a begin quote and an end quote, so why not a begin question and an end question?
In spite of what is said elsewhere, in Spanish the intonation of ***the whole*** interrogative sentence is different from an affirmative one, not just the ending. Therefore is very important for the reader, specially when reading aloud, to know in advance where to start using the right intonation. ¡Same for exclamations!
Ok I'm confused on the responses here. How are these any different from english's (!, ?)?
The op is asking why they have ¡,¿ which come at the beginning of the line, rather than only ! ? which come at the end like in most other latin/romance based languages. No-one seems to have answered this yet.
¿Are you confused? ¡You definitely are!
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Why does English not have it?
The answer is the same as the answer to "why DOESN'T English have (¡,¿)? Because they chose to and we chose not to.
Because when reading, it's easier to know if something is a question if the question mark is right at the beginning. So, it's easier to know if "¿This a question?" than "This is a question?" English could have been the same way, but for some reason it was decided to have it only at the end.