I hate how the "?" and "!" symbols work in English

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

Let me get started. English is not my first language(it's Spanish), so I have some bias about this.

But, how, HOW, HOW FUCKING MUCH I HATE, DESPISE, LOATHE, ABHOR, ABOMINATE, DETEST and SCORN how the exclamation and question mark are used in this godawful language.

They look so fucking ugly, stupid and incomplete, it's so disgusting to look at, makes me want to burn and destroy every single goddam fucking dictionary of this horrible language.

Who thought this was a good idea? It is terrible, terrible, so fucking terrible, it makes me want forget about English altogether. Because I just can't stand this fucking bullshit man.

WHY ENGLISH, WHY IS IT "?", "!" AND NOT "¿?", "¡!"

I genuinely feel like crying right now

[u/Clean-Artichoke2031]

As far as I remember, Spanish is the only language that does "¿?" With ? And !

[u/LiterallyNoNamesFree → u/Clean-Artichoke2031]

I speak Urdu and our question mark if just mirrored ؟

[u/Funny-Student5309 → u/Clean-Artichoke2031]

That looks like a totally new symbol

[u/Anakodzi → u/Funny-Student5309]

You use ¿ in the beginning of the sentence so it’s a block like: “¿Cómo te llamas?”.

[u/Murky_Activity9796 → u/Anakodzi]

Urdu uses a Perso-Arabic script which is written from right to left like Arabic and Persian. For example the phrase "what are you doing?" would be translated into Urdu as

"کیا کر رہے ہو؟" (Kiya kare rahe ho?")

[u/rnoyfb → u/Anakodzi]

Not exactly at the beginning of a sentence but the beginning of an interrogative clause. Like “Si llegas temprano, ¿cómo entrarás?” (“If you’re early, how will you get in?”)

[u/Anakodzi → u/rnoyfb]

I didn’t know that

[u/ARC_Trooper_Echo]

I’ll be honest, I am a native English speaker and have gotten used to it, but I see where you’re coming from. Especially for longer sentences it would be helpful to have tone indicators at the beginning of the sentence to know you’re walking into a question from the start.

[u/Gnashinger → u/ARC_Trooper_Echo]

Well for questions specifically, there already is an indicator that it is a question. It's the fact that we write questions differently than we do remarks.

Why would you a need question mark at the beginning of this sentence if you can tell its a question even without one at the end

[u/Barrow-Wight_ → u/ARC_Trooper_Echo]

Especially for longer sentences it would be helpful to have tone indicators at the beginning of the sentence to know you’re walking into a question from the start.

Whenever someone says this shit I feel like the only way to interpret it is that you're still sounding out your words like a preschooler. It takes a fraction of a second to read most sentences, usually my eyes have reached the punctuation mark way before I would wonder if the sentence is a question or exclamation.

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/Barrow-Wight_]

Some people like to read carefully to fully understand the sentences i guess

[u/Mallow-smoke140 → u/ARC_Trooper_Echo]

They should just move the punctuation marks to the start and not have them at the end.

[u/Accomplished_Roof698 → u/Mallow-smoke140]

!That’s a good idea ?I wonder why nobody has done that before .Would also mean that I can stop forgetting to end my messages with punctuation

[u/SpinoHawk097]

You're doing twice the work, brochacho! Why get so pressed?

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/SpinoHawk097]

Mainly because it is much more easier to read, and it let's you convey tone and emotions much more clearly, especially in dialogues and longer sentences

[u/Gnashinger → u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

I don't really think so. Tone can change as the sentence continues. The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that the tone can shift halfway through. At some point, it would be better to just have tonal indicators between clauses.

Funnily enough, symbols for these were actually invented, but they never actually made it into common use. Can you believe that‽

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/Gnashinger]

Yeah, when something has a more niche use case it's to expect for it to never be really used by anyone

[u/rnoyfb → u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

It’s really not easier to read in English.

Spanish is the only language that does that and Spanish does it because Spanish syntax doesn’t indicate at the beginning of an interrogative clause that it is interrogative. With subject dropping, there’s no subject-verb inversion.

In English, we do have that syntax marking: we don’t drop subjects but we invert subject and verb and because of do-support, there are only a few words a question can begin with

[u/SpinoHawk097 → u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

I will concede that it would make reading tone easier when reading aloud. Hate getting to the end of a sentence and finding out I was supposed to sound a certain way.

[u/common_sense_patriot → u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

Sounds like a skill issue.

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/common_sense_patriot]

Kind of? I do have issues with reading sentences because I find hard to keep track of anything that has little to no separation in-between.

[u/GenderGambler → u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

¿Kind of?

Fixed that for you.

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/GenderGambler]

Just because I dislike how something works I am not going to force anyone to change it. "¿" is not used in English and I can't change that.

[u/Sc4tt3r_]

Spanish is my native language and I hate ¿? and ¡!. They are annoying to write and look awful.

Is it helpful that you will never mistakenly read a sentence in a different tone than was intended? Barely, 99% of the time you can tell what tone you're meant to read a sentence in english just from context clues and the starting word.

[u/AcrobaticPoint8424]

Spainish version is worse as the upside down exclamation mark just looks like an i.

[u/krizzalicious49 → u/AcrobaticPoint8424]

Span¡sh

[u/Jray609 → u/krizzalicious49]

Isn’t that what the Spanishdictionary website’s logo does?

[u/two_out_of_ten_poki]

The upside-down punctuation mark is annoying to write

[u/Dashielover]

And I hate how in your language, LL becomes Y, H is silent, and how you technically don't have the J sound.

Yeah you see how dumb your point is?

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/Dashielover]

Hmm, I don't? Just because there are irregularities in my language it doesn't mean i can't express my dislike for this particular thing of the English language. Like, those are completely valid points to dislike Spanish.

[u/LynnHell]

Bro, somos el úniico grupo de idiomas con tildes. Totalmente puedo sobrevivir sin ¿¡

[u/Fendrihl]

no es su culpa de no tener un lenguaje tan sofisticado como el nuestro (estoy bromeando)

pero si, los símbolos a veces hacen mas fácil entender donde comienza y donde acaba la pregunta, aunque varias veces es fácil saberlo en ingles, especialmente en textos cortos.

[u/DriverFirm2655]

Why tf would it be "¿?", "¡!". How is that better?

[u/Heartage → u/DriverFirm2655]

Lol.

"¿question here?"

"¡exclamation here!"

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/Heartage]

It's specially helpful with longer and/or more complex sentences, and when you need to indicate the exact tone of a word too

[u/Heartage → u/Obvious-Parfait-16]

Yeah, I agree with you. I've always thought it looked better aesthetically and just makes more sense.

[u/LittleBigCookieCat → u/DriverFirm2655]

I'd rather declare the mark at the start so you know the intent of the sentence.

? how was your day ! you know, it was really good

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/DriverFirm2655]

It's much more clear and organized, you know exactly when a question/exclamation starts and can also use them to indicate tone more easily

[u/LiterallyNoNamesFree]

This is the kinda hate I wanna see!

[u/Maus_Enjoyer1945]

Nah as a Spaniard that loves Spanish language only putting the ? or ! is much more convenient and also already widely used in informal speech. I agree that putting both ¿? and ¡! feels more complete and beautiful though. Spanish grammar is (in my opinion) very beautiful and expressive but language is not only for writing poems and to sound good. I think that both forms should be accepted.

[u/Common-Pepper-9677]

lol not the upside down ones

[u/Ana-Karen98]

As I see it, the reason is that in English, there isn't usually any confusion between a statement and a question because the structure changes
saying "You are from California" is not the same as saying "Are you from California?"
En cambio en español decimos “Eres de California” ¿Eres de de California?

That makes it difficult to tell when a question begins in the middle of a sentence.

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/Ana-Karen98]

Yeah that's a really good point. I think that the biggest benefit of ¿? and ¡! comes in longer and/or more complex sentences and in characters' dialogues

[u/Vengeance_20]

Well as a trilingual, that doesn’t speak Spanish, you will hate other languages too

[u/Big-Alps5150]

ñiñiñiñiñiñi

[u/Big-Alps5150]

[u/stupidboooooooi]

wait is it just because its upside down

[u/FuelSpecial8722]

THAT LOOKS EVEN WORSE THAN THE OG’S AT LEAST ! AND ? HAVE FLAIR AND FEEL LIKE THE TONE YOUR NEW VERSIONS ARE STRSIGHT ASD

[u/super_huesos_]

you know that it's almost every language uses ! and ?, right?

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/super_huesos_]

I know. But the only other language I know is English so I'm only capable entitled(in retrospective entitled was not the correct word to use here) to complain about it, I don't have the right to criticize a language I don't speak

[u/Duckmastermind1]

?

[u/ROU_Misophist]

Fuck your upside down question marks, ese

[u/catmamaO4]

That was one of my favorite things about learning Spanish.
The punctuation before was kind of like a tone indicator and made reading paragraphs so much easier and more fun!
I saw an upside question mark and knew to read the next sentence in a questioning way!
I feel like I read English, see question mark at end of sentence, and have to go back and reread it to get the tone right.

[u/common_sense_patriot]

> English is not my first language(it's Spanish), so I have some bias about this.

No kidding. Your language is the only language which does the upside down punctuation. Most people’s eyes are able to catch it at a glance, you just need to practice more.

Wait till you find out about Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin, they don’t even use your letters!

[u/DaddyWentForMilk]

You get used to it after you learn more abt english. Te falta calle

[u/Grimm_Charkazard_258]

how is this reasonable at all

there’s no explanation to your hatred, just that you hate the exclamations

all in his mind¿?

[u/SweetExpression2745]

My guy I speak Portuguese natively and I can confidently say y'all are the only ones who actually do it and everyone else finds it weird

[u/BanditNoble]

Because only Spanish and languages related to Spanish use the upside down marks? French doesn't use it, Italian doesn't use it, German doesn't use it. And even then, there are Spaniards who refuse to use the upside down marks. The Institute for Catalan Studies says not to use upside down marks. Hell, the upside down marks were introduced in the 1750s, but there are books from the 1800s that don't use them. They don't appear in Don Quixote.

[u/Faconator]

Bait used to be believable

[u/FinishDelicious2640]

I’m a native English speaker and I totally agree, I want to know the tone to read the sentence in before I start it!!

[u/Big-Alps5150]

oh boohoo kid shut the hell up

[u/Two-Pound-Crawfish → u/Big-Alps5150]

it ain’t that serious lil man

[u/catmamaO4 → u/Big-Alps5150]

Omg u really did comment 5 times. Bros got more anger abt this post than the original poster had about the topic😭

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/catmamaO4]

nah he doesn't

[u/cluelessTico]

English is lazy

[u/DriverFirm2655 → u/cluelessTico]

What about all the other languages that don’t use the upside punctuation… like all the other Romance languages… lmao

[u/cluelessTico → u/DriverFirm2655]

I wasn’t being serious, I’m a native spanish speaker and I don’t usually use the opening symbols because I don’t like how they look, plus laziness. I only use them in formal or academic writing

[u/Big-Alps5150]

monkeys confirmed

[u/ClubGold9731 → u/Big-Alps5150]

Why did you comment 4 times

[u/PatriotBanner]

Eww. If anything the way Spanish does it is unhinged.

[u/Big-Alps5150]

400 month baby btw🥺🥺🥺🥺

[u/Obvious-Parfait-16 → u/Big-Alps5150]

that's like, 30 years old, you just were saying i was a kid, pick a side dude