In the comments on our editorial about language purism and the Psystar case, it became quite clear that language is a subject almost everyone has an opinion on - not odd if you consider that language is at the very centre of what makes us "human". Since this appears to be a popular subject, let's talk about the influence computing has had on two very minor aspects of the Dutch language.
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Member since:2005-06-29
I have little to no knowledge about Spanish, but it could be that in Spanish, the sentence structure does not change based on whether the sentence is a question or not. If that's indeed the case (a Spanish speaker will have to confirm) then I can certainly see a use in starting a question sentence with a toppled-over question mark, because else you wouldn't know it was a question until you reached the end of the sentence - screwing up intonation, especially when reading aloud.
Member since:2009-10-27
As a native Spanish speaker, I can tell that Thorn is right indeed. Even though some words can help you learn you are about to state a question or an exclamation (as elmimmo stated above), most of the time the only way to know it is through intonation. Without opening marks, when you get to the closing one it is way too late.
As a side note, I am pasting a rather amusing but totally true statement found in the "Spanish language" article in Wikipedia:
"An amusing example of the significance of intonation in Spanish is the phrase ¿Cómo, como como? ¡Como como, como! (What do you mean, how do I eat? I eat the way I eat!)." I assure you each and every one of those "como" are pronounced the same, but intonated differently.
Member since:2006-03-17
I believe the reason is mostly caused by the word(s) "Por que":
http://spanish.about.com/od/writtenspanish/a/porque.htm
It's a horrible little pair of syllables that take the place of "why is/are", "because", "for what/which", "that", and sometimes "for the reason". It can be one or two words, with or without accent.
English is less compact and tends to make a question's syntax more obvious towards the end. I once had a Spanish teacher point out that English is also more suspenseful than most Latin-based languages and causes the reader to reach the end of the sentence before it can be fully digested by the brain. Alternatively, in Spanish you know the subject/noun first and adjectives come later, making the beginning of the sentence more significant - perhaps worthy of an upside-down question mark. But it's still ugly if you ask me.
English: "red rubber ball"
Spanish: "pelota de goma roja"
Member since:2006-08-02
Member since:2005-09-17
Calling all Spanish speaking people subdued by the idiocy of their language was nice trolling. So, knowing that what follows is a sentence before actually starting to read it has no purpose? Then I bet, say, opening quotation marks do not have one either.
I can perfectly admit that other languages can perfectly pass without opening question or exclamation marks. It was just a rhetorical statement. There are no absolutes, man. Of course the content of the text helps you understand the nature of it. Sometimes, though, it is handy to get a hint or two. Or you'll tell me you have never ever been in that situation when you realize your intonation was wrong all along until you got to the end, right?
And we are talking languages here. If you wanted math, it is the wrong thread. Why does the English 3rd person has a frigging s at the end in present tense? I see nobody claiming for getting rid of it.
Edited 2009-10-27 22:21 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2005-07-06
What purpose does it serve? "I AM GOING TO ASK A QUESTION AND THIS MARK IS TO INFORM YOU THAT I AM" and then closing it being little more than "I AM CLOSING THIS QUESTION MARK BECAUSE YOU MIGHT GET CONFUSED" - now imagine a slightly over weight man screaming that at the beginning and end of that sentence to give you what a visualisation of what it appears on the page to the reader. Envisage the tango man doing it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1jywlZG74o . To me it is an attempt to label the reader an idiot who can't seem to understand when a question is asked either that or I am just mad trying to bring about a metaphysical representation of my reaction when I see such oddities on a page
Maybe I just have a hatred against needless syntax that ad no literary value beyond "it looks nice" but serving no functionary purpose. Boomer addresses why it is there based on historical reasoning but fails to address why it still exists today. Why not purge it out? it doesn't serve any real purpose, its a needless complication for people to learn the language and it simply adds fluff to an otherwise simple sentence.
Why? why not use the wonderful comma? why not a series of questions one after another? if it is necessary, then how come other language can get away not using it? I hear examples but their reason for trying to work around crappy sentence structure rather than addressing why the sentence structure is crappy. Adding to the fact that there is a growing trend of people not reading the full sentence, paragraph or set of writing on its entirety and trying to pull out pieces in isolation rather than seeing the writing that should be viewed holistically. So if anything - maybe the solution is to get people to read and write properly than dropping in symbols to make up for craptastic comprehension and grammar.
Edited 2009-10-27 12:08 UTC