Re: rhetorically speaking

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