tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 05 11:30:43 1996
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Re: Re[3]: KLI Fonts
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>Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 06:22:51 -0700
>From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
>I don't think it's appropriate to call the Japanese particle "ka" a
>"spoken question mark". Like the Esperanto particle "cxu", or the
>Bengali pronoun "ki", "ka" just transforms a statement into a yes-or-no
>question. If a question is not yes-or-no, you don't use "ka". So it
>doesn't really serve as punctuation. It is, in fact, identical in
>function to something we already know about in Klingon: the verb suffix
>{-'a'}.
Is this so? In my limited knowledge of Japanese, I know that "What is
it/that/etc?" translates to "nan deska?"--clearly not a yes/no question.
- From what I understand, Japanese "ka" *is* a spoken question mark, added to
*all* questions, not just yes/no questions, as opposed to Klingon -'a' or
Esperanto cxu, which are yes/no markers.
Or am I mistaken?
~mark
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