Why not periods? Why doesn’t every sentence in Spanish that isn’t a question or exclamation start with a period floating in the sky?

  • teft@lemmy.world
    13·
    9 months ago

    English changes the order of the words of the sentence. Spanish uses punctuation marks. It’s just differences in languages. Personally I appreciate them since it helps me read Spanish quicker with fewer parsing errors.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
      55·
      9 months ago

      “How would I find out?”

      I can tell you.

      I can tell you?

      Yes, English uses word order to define grammar in many more sentences than Spanish, but not exclusively.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        13·
        9 months ago

        I can tell you?

        Dunno for others but for me this question sounds rhetorical, due to the lack of inversion. By default you expect questions in English to start with an optional interrogative pronoun, plus a [typically auxiliary] verb - “can I tell you?”, “do you know him?”, “how do you know this?” et cetera.