1579
¿¿Que?? (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/memes@lemmy.ml
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 65 points 1 year ago

In Spanish questions are phrased the same way as affirmations, when you are speaking the only difference is the intonation. Without a mark to say you are starting to read a question it's possible that the meaning changes in the end which would be annoying. (Source: Portuguese is the same but has no inverted question mark, and sometimes it's mighty annoying, especially with long questions)

[-] tdawg@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Funny enough English does this all the time:

  • That's food.
  • That's food!
  • That's food?
  • That's food?!
  • That's food...

All have different intonations and punctuation but are otherwise the same. Internet lingo does compensate for this somewhat but at least in "proper" form the above holds true for all kinds of situations

[-] schmidtster@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

1 Food that is edible

2 Tasty food

3 Bad looking food

4 Either happy or disgusted at what was just in your mouth

5 Defending your cooking after it’s referred to as 1-4

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago

Imagine if you could ask questions like "James, Mary, and Jack went to the market last Saturday to buy a shovel, a black bag, and some gloves, to bury Karen's corpse in the deep dark woods?"

[-] Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

No no no, James, Mary, and Jack went to the market last Saturday to buy a shovel, a black bag, and some flashlights, to bury Karen's corpse in the deep dark woods

[-] margaritox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

English can do that too, but it’s not really a “proper” way of doing it. The proper way would be to say “is that food?”

There are languages where the only way to pose a question is to change the intonation.

[-] Littleborat@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

But doesn't the intonation simply go up in the end? So it's good enough to stumble over the ? in the end.

[-] margaritox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I honestly haven’t paid attention where it starts going up. But I always thought that doing the two “?”s in Spanish was pretty clever for that reason.

[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 year ago

True, though doing this makes it sound incredulous.

In Spanish it's just how questions are.

[-] octoperson@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 year ago

Portuguese is the same but has no inverted question mark, and sometimes it's mighty annoying,

¿What if you just used them anyway?
¡Problem solved!

[-] Anamana@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's true for any language really

[-] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not really. In my language subject and verb get switched around in a question. So you immediately know it’s a question when you start reading the sentence.

[-] Anamana@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Can you give me an example?

Edit: Ok thanks guys, I got it :D

[-] araozu@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe

  • I do like cats
  • Do I like cats?

but taken to the extreme?

[-] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  • Hij schreef een bericht. (He wrote a message)

  • Schreef hij een bericht? (Did he wrote a message?)

[-] stebo02@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Zeg eens, waarom wil je zo graag met een CEO slapen?

[-] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Fuck Spez daarom

[-] aka_oscar@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Can you give me an example - Question

You can give me an example - Affirmation

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

I know you already got it but a few others came to my mind:

Finnish, which not a tonal language:

  • Sinä pidät kahvista. (“You like coffee.”)
  • Pidätkö kahvista? ("You like coffee?")

Japanese:

  • Anata wa kōhī ga sukidesu. ("You like coffee.")
  • Kōhī wa sukidesu ka? ("You like coffee?")

I think you'll find the pattern of question words/suffixes in nearly every language that is not explicitly tonal.

[-] Anamana@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's initially why I thought there was no difference to Spanish. But the difference is Spanish actually doesn't have an option where you switch subject and verb. Didn't know that :)

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

Oh. Very good point. I did not know that either.

[-] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

É de facto irritante. Nada como estar na escola e um prof pede para ler. Estás calmamente a ler o texto e de repente tens de forçar a porcaria da entoação para sobrecompensar o facto de que não reparaste que era uma pergunta

this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
1579 points (98.5% liked)

Memes

45555 readers
1133 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS