Forum - View topic[OT] Punctuation in Japanese
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hentai4me
 Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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I've seen several pieces of Japanese and Chinese text in which western punctuation marks are used. Such as the !, ?, : , ;, , (, ), [, ] symbols.
I was wondering if that was because these languages had no defining puntuation structure and they adopted ours or for some other reason. (though i thought 'Ka' was an equivalent of a question) |
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sandy_taty
 Posts: 132 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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What do you mean?????
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hentai4me
Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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I mean this:- http://www.imagica.com/shop/azumanga/character/sub_chiyo.html Note how the '?' symbol is used. I was wondering why western punctuation marks are used in Japanese and Chinese text. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Why? To make texts more readable. The first Chinese book complete with punctuations was an edition of Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn (水滸傳, the first novel in Vernacular Chinese written circa 12th century; in Japanese it's called Suikoden -- see Tony's avatar) published in 1920. You can read modern usages of Chinese and Japanese punctuations here. |
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hentai4me
Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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Thanks for that.
Any idea why Japanese and Chinese didn't have punctuation? |
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sandy_taty
Posts: 132 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Hey good one hentai4me..knowing that isn't my post.....Now I'm asking myself why??? dormcat:Why?? |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Similar to Classical Latin (which didn't even have space between words!), Classical Chinese and Japanese had no punctuation and relied on context and rhyme to break sentences apart. Of course, this could produce numerous misunderstandings, particularly among those illiterates and lowly educated people, and those who had the privilige to receive better education spent much time learning how to decipher texts without punctuation correctly. An important classical book (e.g. the Confucian Analects) can be interpreted by dozens of different scholars throughout millennia. |
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Webki
 Posts: 299 Location: Albany, NY |
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I've noticed a common thing now in Japanese writing is to use a period that is a small circle drawn at the end of a sentence. However, I haven't really encountered exclamation points or question marks. Generally speaking, exclamation points are handled by the particle yo and questions by the particle ka.
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selenta
 Subscriber Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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This is my experience as well. To my knowledge, exclamation points, question marks, and any other punctuation besides that hollow circle period are not considered "proper" grammer. I've never seen them used outside of pop culture, and I've never seen them used even in pop culture if the writing is traditional (top-to-bottom, right-to-left). They are probably just using those other punctuation marks as a sort of sub-conscious (or maybe it's conscious, I don't know
 ) pop-culture hommage to the language their left-to-right, top-to-bottom writing style is based on.
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Nagisa
Moderator
 Posts: 6128 Location: Atlanta-ish, Jawjuh |
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Speaking of grammar and punctuation, one question mark is enough. One question mark, and no question mark smileys. |
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