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?

  • Nougat
    link
    fedilink
    -63 months ago

    English manages the exact same thing without the leading punctuation.

    • teft
      link
      fedilink
      13
      edit-2
      3 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
        link
        fedilink
        03 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
          link
          fedilink
          13
          edit-2
          3 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.