¿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

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I love this too - it's always struck me as sensible. Especially when you're reading aloud.

But I don't think '¿Where? are you going.' works though, does it? 'are you going' doesn't stand on its own - you wouldn't say '¿Donde? vas.' in Spanish - you can't really put any more emphasis on the interrogative itself than is already there, can you?

*thinks*

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

> *thinks*

Yay! That's always fun.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't believe the spanish do anything like the mid-sentence ¿? either, but I thought it was an (original) cool idea (even if ultimately impractical), because it lets you call out what the question is about.

¿Why? are you cutting that? Because I want it in two pieces.
Why are you ¿cutting? that? Because I'm not strong enough to break it.

Maybe :)