Re: Large language structures

Nokta Kanto scripsit:

> On the subject, I'd really love to know how and why English has acquired so
> many punctuation markers. It seems like other languages have very few of
> these. What happened to make it so? Do funny things like the semicolon and
> the long dash get adopted into other languages?
I don't think English is exceptional at all.  Most languages using the
Latin, Cyrillic, or Greek scripts make use of the same punctuation
marks for more or less the same purposes.  (The Greek question mark,
which looks like a semicolon, is exceptional.)

> Why do different latin
> languages (the spanish <<>> and the german ``,, come to mind) have different
> quotation marks?
No definite answer can be given, but here's a capsule summary of which
languages use what, from the Unicode Standard:

English, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish: high-6 opens,
high-9 closes; guillemets (if used) point away from the text.

German, Czech, Slovak: low-9 opens, high-6 closes; guillemets point toward
the text.

Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish: high-9 both opens and closes; guillemets
point to the right.

Hungarian, Polish: low-9 opens, high-9 closes; guillemets (if used) point
to the right.

French, Greek, Russian: guillemets are normal and point away from the text.

Slovene: guillemets are normal and point toward the text.

If anyone has corrections or additions to this list, please send them
to errata@unicode.org, as the next edition of Unicode is in progress.
Don't expect immediate acknowledgement.

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