In Spanish, why do they use the upside down question marks and exclamation marks?

Question

We asked our Spanish teacher and even she doesn't know. Which may mean no one on here does either. But its worth a try, I might get an answer...

Wow what a response. Thanks, you've been helpful. Choosing a best answer will be hard...

Answer 1

It's a flag, a tip-off saying, "This next sentence is a question, please read it as such."

Unlike the English convention, which is, "That sentence? The one you just finished reading? It was a question."

Sort of like the disclaimer for Itchy and Scratchy - "WARNING: The preceding cartoon was violent and should not have been watched by young children."

It's tradition, sure, but it also makes reading slightly easier.

Answer 2

Unlike English, Spanish does not use any form of speech inversion to indicate that a given sentence is a question. (In English one says things like: do you? Has he? Were they?, etc etc.)

But in Spanish it is all in the tone of voice and the upside down question marks alerts you to the fact that you are about to read a question and the tone in which you utter it (perhaps only in your mind, if you are reading to yourself) must therefore reflect this.

Having introduced this useful system with the question mark, why not extend it to the exclamation mark? Having been tipped off to the fact that this is an exclamation, you strike exactly the right tone in reading it out!

Answer 3

I think it's a brilliant idea, especially if you are reading aloud, because it tells the reader what sort of intonation to use. For instance, "cuando" (when) can introduce either a question or a statement and the reader may not realise until near the end of the sentence that it is a question. It would be useful, I think, if we too used the inverted exclamation mark in English, The inverted question mark would be of less use in English (or French), because we use inversion of the subject to signal a question, e.g. "When he came, he removed his belongings." and "When did he come and remove his belongings ?" By the time you reach the second word, you can tell that it is either a question or a statement. Incidentally, neither Catalan nor Basque use the inverted question and exclamation marks.

Answer 4

Because these marks are handled as brackets ( ...) are, i.e. first opened to introduce a questiona/exclamation and than closen to make clear that it is exactly there where that very question/exclamation ends.

Compare a few examples of sentence-marks in Spanish and English:

Lara ( she never loved this name) was asleep....
Lara ( nunca pudo soportar este nombre ) dormía ...

Lara said: " I've never loved my name ..."
Lara dijo: " Yo nunca pude soportar este nombre mío..."

Lara: Why do I not love my name ?
Lara: ¿Porque nunca pude soportar mi nombre?

Lara: Shut up!
Lara: ¡Cállate !

As you can see Spanish follows a logical usage of these marks: all of them "start" and and all of them "end" a closen clause.

In all other languages sentence marks miss the first introduction if questions or exclamation, but mantain all others.

I tried to find the historical origin of them, but without success.

I think that there is no particular reason why. Spanish is simply a very logical and systematic language.
This might be a reason....
.
.

Answer 5

There's no answer but since Im puertorican, I believe it is because the sound of the question is not at the end, it's always in every part of the sentence, I belive the signs say when do you understand its a question and in spanish, both start and finish reflect it

Answer 6

For reading purposes. It helps the reader to determine that the coming sentence is a question or an exclamation.

I would say Caicos explained it very well.

Answer 7

because the first question or exclamation mark is to open the question or exclamation sentence and the last one (wich is used in all languages that are written with the same characters: english,italian,.portuguese,french,german,etc)is to close the question or exclamation

Answer 8

To mark the beggining of a question. I think it makes more sense than the english. You have to know when the question starts not only when it ends.

Answer 9

I don't know..Portuguese and Italian don't so why do the Spanish (is it the only language that has these distracting features?)..This was one reason I chose Portuguese to learn instead of Spanish.
Another was the horrid 'th' sound in grazias (grathias)
and Barcelona (Barthelona) although this is not found in Latin America.

Answer 10

to tell you that a question is about to come

it's because in spanish it's the tone of voice that tells you whether it's a statement or a question