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
    link
    13
    edit-2
    8 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
      08 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
        8 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.

      • @glimse
        link
        68 months ago

        That’s not a direct comparison.

        You can tell me

        vs

        Can you tell me?