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Re: rhetorically speaking

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Sunday, May 16, 2004, 15:43
On May 14, 2004, at 11:05 PM, Tim May wrote:
> Stephen Mulraney wrote at 2004-05-14 20:41:40 (+0100) >> Peter Bleackley wrote: >>> Staving Mark P. Line: >>>> It would be interesting to know if there are any spoken or written >>>> natlangs that have obligatory marking of rhetorical questions. >>> >>> There used to be a rhetorical question mark, which was a >>> left-right flip of the normal one. However, printers never really >>> took to it. It should be possible in LaTeX, however. >>> >> There used to be a rhetorical, flipped question mark? Interesting, but >> when are we talking about? > > 1580s-1600s, according to Wikipedia. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark > http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw925
The Arabic question mark is the mirror-image of the Latin one. Hebrew uses the Latin one, even though it faces the 'wrong' direction for the direction of the script - probably since it was borrowed late from European languages. I don't know how old the Arabic one is, though. ObConlang: From the related Wikipedia article on quotation marks, I now know that Rokbeigalmki quotes follow an actual standard! Even if it's just the Turkish/Greek/Albanian *alternative* one ;) . -Stephen (Steg) "You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there." ~ _jonathan livingston seagull_ by richard bach