¿What ees this?

[jack]

I propose that english should use ¿ and ?. They will bracket the part of the sentence that is a question, and a question mark on the last word displaces the full stop as we do now.

For instance:

* ¿Where are going?
* ¿Where? are you going.
* ¿Where are you going?, we need to talk before you leave.
* I really have to wonder ¿Where are you going?

This is barely more typing, and will often remove some ambiguity, and allow more structure to be put in sentences. OK, I'm mainly joking -- you can always restructure the sentence to not need to emphasise the questioning part, or to put it at the end. But isn't it interesting?

You could do the same thing with ¡ and ! to emphasise a single word like ¡this!, but in fact we already do that with *these*. The only benefit of ¡!ing is that ¡they could be ¡nested!!, but in fact that probably only appeals to mathematicians, and definitely would make them unnecessarily complicated :)

ETA: This is similar but not the same as the spanish use of ¿ and ? iirc.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

¿Don't you think that they should enclose an entire clause? ¿Where? are you going. seems wrong to me.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. I was thinking that you would habitually enclose the clause or sentence, but I think -- and I'm really not sure about this, sounds aren't my strong point -- that in english speech you typically mark the end of a question with a rising tone, But if you're saying "WHERE are you going??", as in, you going is forgone, but where is incredable, the "where" is louder, and also has the rising tone and "going" doesn't.

If so, "¿Where? are you going," (or even "¡Where? are you going,") would seem to mimic the meaning and pronunciation in a pleasing fasion.

Of course, I don't know if this is a *good* thing, even if true.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I disagree that you don't have a rising tone on going. It's still part of a question. It seems as though you are suggesting that the WHERE is some sort of exclamation within a question, ¿would you agree with that? It sounds like what you are really looking for is an interrobang (and gnaborretni).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I was going to say that an exclamation mark or interrobang would successfully indicate what I mean, but I did think when I say "Where" incredulously it has a more questioning tone as well as any loudness, and "going" less if not none.

Unfortunately, muttering "¿Where?" under my breath is starting to draw odd looks so I'd best postpone the experiment.

But now it occurs to me a better example would be the difference between "What do you want?" with a slight emphasis on "you" or "what" -- that isn't anything out of the ordinary but you can hear the difference easily in speech.

Unfortunately, my pretty system was wrong here. "You" becomes I think stressed, but not any more questioning. So I still think "What do ¿you? want," (Or maybe we should have the terminal ? as well?) has a useful distinction audible in speech, that of "What do you want, as opposed to what everyone else wants from me?", but doesn't really represent the sound. Never mind.