Questions in Mandarin.
zhenlijiang
February 23, 2010, 08:44 AM posted in I Have a QuestionThanks Changye for your answer. So then Mandarin didn't need the question mark, prior to the colloquial movement--because it was literary? How did people ask questions in 文言? Or did they not? I guess I'm just extremely ignorant regarding 文言-白话 in general ...
zhenlijiang
Yeah. I've been seeing and using question marks unthinkingly all my life.
changye
February 23, 2010, 09:32 AMHi zhenlijiang
Actually, modern Chinese doesn't need to use a question mark either when you ask a question as there are a lot of interrogative words such as 为什么，谁，哪儿，and 吗. The same is very true for classical Chinese.
zhenlijiang
Could you give an example of a question constructed in modern Mandarin that doesn't use the question mark? Or where could I see one? I'd like to know what one looks like and see how confident I would be, if I came across it, in recognizing that it is indeed a question.
changye
Hi zhenlijiang
What I wanted to say is that Chinese interrogative sentences generally make sense even if you don't place a question mark at the end of them, but this doesn't mean you don't need to use a question mark for interrogative sentences because it's against modern Chinese orthography. The same is true, for example, for English, Korean, and Japanese, but not for Indonesian. This language definitely needs a question mark.
Ini orang utan. (This is an orangutan.)
Ini orang utan? (Is this an orangutan?)
P/S. よく考えたら、「食べる？」のような口語的な疑問文では疑問符が必須ですね。
zhenlijiang
Ah OK. Thank you as always Changye for your patience!
zhenlijiang
February 24, 2010, 06:08 AMYeah. I've been seeing and using question marks unthinkingly all my life.
zhenlijiang
February 24, 2010, 06:34 AMChangye I guess you didn't want to make me lose face, but of course as a Japanese I really ought to know better.
(I think even dumb questions can have some value though ...)
So anyway it did occur to me immediately afterward that I didn't know when Japanese started using question and exclamation marks either. I wonder how similar/different the Japanese 言文一致 gen-bun icchi movement in the Meiji period and the 白话 movement were. I'm not asking for an answer to this though. I have to study up more on Japanese first!
zhenlijiang
February 24, 2010, 06:42 AMCould you give an example of a question constructed in modern Mandarin that doesn't use the question mark? Or where could I see one? I'd like to know what one looks like and see how confident I would be, if I came across it, in recognizing that it is indeed a question.
orangina
February 23, 2010, 08:57 AMI think I am more confused by why it is needed in Chinese today, as there are a few question words to choose from. I've never found it to be particularly useful in English, either. But it does add a bit of visual interest to the page, doesn't it?