The question mark ? (also known as interrogation point , query , or eroteme in journalism ) is a punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages .
105-472: In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used question markers, according to a 2011 theory by manuscript specialist Chip Coakley: he believes the zagwa elaya ("upper pair"), a vertical double dot over a word at the start of a sentence, indicates that the sentence is a question. From around 783, in Godescalc Evangelistary , a mark described as "a lightning flash, striking from right to left"
210-486: A language spoken in Solomon Islands . It is closely related to Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and Bislama of Vanuatu ; the three varieties are sometimes considered to be dialects of a single Melanesian Pidgin language. It is also related to Torres Strait Creole of Torres Strait , though more distantly. In 1999 there were 307,000 second- or third-language speakers with a literacy rate in first language of 60%,
315-406: A meta -sign to signal uncertainty regarding what precedes it. It is usually put between brackets: (?) . The uncertainty may concern either a superficial level (such as unsure spelling), or a deeper truth (real meaning ). In typography, some other variants and combinations are available: "⁇," "⁈," and "⁉," are usually used for chess annotation symbols ; the interrobang , "‽," is used to combine
420-436: A query string to be appended to a resource location in a Web address so that additional information can be passed to a script; the query mark, ? , is used to indicate the start of a query string. A query string is usually made up of a number of different field/value pairs, each separated by the ampersand symbol, & , as seen in this URL: http://www.example.com/search.php?query=testing&database=English Here,
525-618: A string . In particular, filename globbing uses "?" as a substitute for any one character, as opposed to the asterisk , "*", which matches zero or more characters in a string. The question mark is used in ASCII renderings of the International Phonetic Alphabet , such as SAMPA , in place of the glottal stop symbol, ʔ , (which resembles " ? " without the dot), and corresponds to Unicode code point U+0294 ʔ LATIN LETTER GLOTTAL STOP . In computer programming ,
630-399: A blank tile. In most areas of linguistics , but especially in syntax , a question mark in front of a word, phrase or sentence indicates that the form in question is strongly dispreferred, "questionable" or "strange", but not outright ungrammatical . (The asterisk is used to indicate outright ungrammaticality.) Other sources go further and use several symbols (e.g. the question mark and
735-441: A central role in the transformation of the language. It is now the lingua franca of the country, though it has no official status. Despite being the lingua franca of Solomon Islands, Pijin remains a spoken language with little to no effort made thus far on the part of the national government toward standardising its orthography and grammar. Efforts at standardisation have been made by Christian Associations such as SITAG. There exists
840-411: A closer grammatical relationship by the addition of a pronominal suffix. Thus, the phrase can be written as ܫܩ̈ܠܝܗ ܕܡܠܟܘܬܐ , šeqlêh d-malkuṯā . In this case, both nouns continue to be in the emphatic state, but the first has the suffix that makes it literally read "her taxes" ("kingdom" is feminine), and thus is "her taxes, [those] of the kingdom". Adjectives always agree in gender and number with
945-482: A common synonym for Aramaic language in general, while other (conventional and narrower) designating only the Edessan Aramaic, also referred to more specifically as the " Classical Syriac ". Noting the problem, scholars have tried to resolve the issue by being more consistent in their use of the term " Classical Syriac " as a strict and clear scientific designation for the old literary and liturgical language, but
1050-443: A few irregular stems, like the Šap̄ʿel and ʾEštap̄ʿal , which generally have an extensive meaning. The basic G-stem or "Peal" conjugation of "to write" in the perfect and imperfect is as follows: Phonologically, like the other Northwest Semitic languages, Syriac has 22 consonants. The consonantal phonemes are: Solomon Islands Pidgin Pijin (or Solomons Pidgin ) is
1155-620: A fundamental cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic , which largely replaced it during the later medieval period. Syriac remains the sacred language of Syriac Christianity to this day. It is used as liturgical language of several denominations, like those who follow the East Syriac Rite , including the Assyrian Church of the East , the Ancient Church of the East ,
SECTION 10
#17328487217101260-480: A literacy rate in second language of 50%. During the early nineteenth century, an English jargon , known as Beach-la-Mar , developed and spread through the Western Pacific as a language used among traders ( lingua franca ) associated with the whaling industry at the end of the 18th century, the sandalwood trade of the 1830s, and the bêche-de-mer trade of the 1850s. Between 1863 and 1906, blackbirding
1365-468: A partial dictionary since 1978 (Simons and Young 1978), a full dictionary of Pijin since 2002 (Jourdan 2002), a spelling list (Beimers 2010) and a complete description of its grammar (Beimers 2009). This being the case, Pijin remains a very flexible language where the main focus is on message delivery irrespective of the niceties of formal sentence construction. A translation of the Bible into Pijin also represents
1470-412: A script on the page search.php on the server www.example.com is to provide a response to the query string containing the pairs query= testing and database= English . In algebraic chess notation , some chess punctuation conventions include: " ? " denotes a bad move, " ?? " a blunder , " ?! " a dubious move, and " !? " an interesting move. In Scrabble , a question mark indicates
1575-516: A specific variant of the Aramaic language in relation to its regional origin in northeastern parts of Ancient Syria , around Edessa , which lay outside of the provincial borders of Roman Syria . Since Aramaic was used by various Middle Eastern peoples, having several variants ( dialects ), this specific dialect that originated in northeastern Syria became known under its regional (Syrian/Syriac) designation ( Suryaya ). In English scholarly literature ,
1680-474: A spoken indicator of questions, か (ka), which essentially functions as a verbal question mark. Therefore, the question mark is optional with か in Japanese. For example, both 終わったのかもしれませんよ。 or 終わったのかもしれませんよ？ are correct to express "It may be over". The question mark is not used in official usages such as governmental documents or school textbooks. Most Japanese people do not use the question mark as well, but
1785-401: A standardisation of some aspects of Pijin. (Recreated with IPA from Wateha'a, Jourdan, and Mugler. ) Several consonant phonemes show variation, in part depending on the speaker's personal linguistic background – i.e. the phonological profile of the vernacular language(s) they speak at home. Several cases of variation are simply due to the regular devoicing of voiced consonants at
1890-405: A variant designation for the ancient Eblaite language from the third millennium BC, that is unrelated to the much later Edessan Aramaic, and its early phases, that were commonly labeled as Old/Proto- or even Paleo/Palaeo-Syrian/Syriac in scholarly literature. Newest addition to the terminological mosaic occurred c. 2014, when it was proposed, also by a scholar, that one of regional dialects of
1995-409: Is U+00BF ¿ INVERTED QUESTION MARK ( ¿ ). Galician also uses the inverted opening question mark, though usually only in long sentences or in cases that would otherwise be ambiguous. Basque and Catalan , however, use only the terminal question mark. In Solomon Islands Pidgin , the question can be between question marks since, in yes/no questions, the intonation can be
2100-530: Is allowed, although discouraged: The omission of the opening mark is common in informal writing, but is considered an error. The one exception is when the question mark is matched with an exclamation mark, as in: (The order may also be reversed, opening with a question mark and closing with an exclamation mark.) Nonetheless, even here the Academia recommends matching punctuation: The opening question mark in Unicode
2205-637: Is also taught in some public schools in Iraq , Syria , Palestine , Israel , Sweden , Augsburg (Germany) and Kerala (India). In 2014, an Assyrian nursery school could finally be opened in Yeşilköy , Istanbul after waging a lawsuit against the Ministry of National Education which had denied it permission, but was required to respect non-Muslim minority rights as specified in the Treaty of Lausanne . In August 2016,
SECTION 20
#17328487217102310-457: Is also used in "optional chaining", where if an option value is nil, it ignores the following operations. Similarly, in Kotlin , a type followed by ? is nullable and functions similar to option chaining are supported. In APL , ? generates random numbers or a random subset of indices. In Rust , a ? suffix on a function or method call indicates error handling. In SPARQL , the question mark
2415-484: Is attested. This mark is later called a punctus interrogativus . According to some paleographers , it may have indicated intonation , perhaps associated with early musical notation like neumes . Another theory, is that the "lightning flash" was originally a tilde or titlo , as in ·~ , one of many wavy or more or less slanted marks used in medieval texts for denoting things such as abbreviations , which would later become various diacritics or ligatures . From
2520-544: Is related, involves a distinction between singular, dual, trial and plural pronouns. Dual forms refer to two people or things, trial forms refer to three and plural forms refer to three or more. Such pronoun forms do not occur in English but are common in South Pacific languages. Pijin pronouns also use different forms to distinguish between inclusive and exclusive pronouns. The inclusive and exclusive features are only realised in
2625-421: Is the head-noun which is marked by the construct state. Thus, ܫܩ̈ܠܝ ܡܠܟܘܬܐ , šeqlay malkuṯā , means "the taxes of the kingdom". Quickly, the construct relationship was abandoned and replaced by the use of the relative particle ܕ , d-, da- . Thus, the same noun phrase becomes ܫܩ̈ܠܐ ܕܡܠܟܘܬܐ , šeqlē d-malkuṯā , where both nouns are in the emphatic state. Very closely related nouns can be drawn into
2730-403: Is used to introduce variable names, such as ?name . In MUMPS , it is the pattern match operator. In many Web browsers and other computer programs, when converting text between encodings, it may not be possible to map some characters into the target character set . In this situation it is common to replace each unmappable character with a question mark ? , inverted question mark ¿ , or
2835-497: Is written in the Syriac alphabet , a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet . The language is preserved in a large body of Syriac literature , that comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature. Along with Greek and Latin , Syriac became one of the three most important languages of Early Christianity . Already from the first and second centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region of Osroene began to embrace Christianity , and by
2940-522: The BBC BASIC family), ? is used to address a single-byte memory location. In OCaml , the question mark precedes the label for an optional parameter. In Scheme , as a convention, symbol names ending in ? are used for predicates, such as odd? , null? , and eq? . Similarly, in Ruby , method names ending in ? are used for predicates. In Swift a type followed by ? denotes an option type ; ?
3045-1023: The Chaldean Catholic Church , the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church , and the Assyrian Pentecostal Church , and also those who follow the West Syriac Rite , including: Syriac Orthodox Church , the Syriac Catholic Church , the Maronite Catholic Church , the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church , the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church . Classical Syriac was originally
3150-632: The Church of the East in central and northeastern Mesopotamia. Religious divisions were also reflected in linguistic differences between the Western Syriac Rite and the Eastern Syriac Rite . During the 5th and the 6th century, Syriac reached its height as the lingua franca of Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. It existed in literary (liturgical) form, as well as in vernacular forms, as the native language of Syriac-speaking populations. Following
3255-504: The Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church , the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and some Parishes in the Syro-Malabar Knanaya Archeparchy of Kottayam . Eastern Syriac is the liturgical language of the East Syriac Rite , practised in modern times by the ethnic Assyrian followers of the Assyrian Church of the East , the Assyrian Pentecostal Church , the Ancient Church of the East , the Chaldean Catholic Church , as well as
Question mark - Misplaced Pages Continue
3360-470: The Mesopotamian language ( Nahrāyā ) and Aramaic ( Aramāyā ), is an Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect. Classical Syriac is the academic term used to refer to the dialect's literary usage and standardization, distinguishing it from other Aramaic dialects also known as 'Syriac' or 'Syrian'. In its West-Syriac tradition, Classical Syriac is often known as leššōnō kṯoḇonōyō ( lit. '
3465-877: The Middle East , Central Asia and the Malabar Coast in India , and remains so among the Syriac Christians to this day. It has been found as far afield as Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain , with inscriptions written by Aramaic-speaking soldiers of the Roman Empire . History of Syriac language is divided into several successive periods, defined primarily by linguistic, and also by cultural criteria. Some terminological and chronological distinctions exist between different classifications, that were proposed among scholars. During
3570-647: The Near East (2003), those issues have acquired additional complexity, related to legal recognition of the language and its name. In the Constitution of Iraq (Article 4), adopted in 2005, and also in subsequent legislation, term " Syriac " ( Arabic : السريانية / al-suriania ) is used as official designation for the language of Neo-Aramaic -speaking communities, thus opening additional questions related to linguistic and cultural identity of those communities. Legal and other practical (educational and informational) aspects of
3675-458: The Neo-Aramaic languages. Such differences in classification, both terminological and substantial, within systems and between systems (ISO and MARC), led to the creation of several additional problems, that remain unresolved. Within linguistics, mosaic of terminological ambiguities related to Syrian/Syriac labels was additionally enriched by introduction of the term " Palaeo-Syrian language " as
3780-461: The Old Aramaic language from the first centuries of the 1st millennium BC should be called " Central Syrian Aramaic ", thus introducing another ambiguous term, that can be used, in its generic meaning, to any local variant of Aramaic that occurred in central regions of Syria during any period in history. After more than five centuries of Syriac studies , which were founded by western scholars at
3885-454: The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in India. Syriac literature is by far the most prodigious of the various Aramaic languages. Its corpus covers poetry, prose, theology, liturgy, hymnody, history, philosophy, science, medicine and natural history. Much of this wealth remains unavailable in critical editions or modern translation. From the 7th century onwards, Syriac gradually gave way to Arabic as
3990-511: The Thaana script in Dhivehi uses the mirrored question mark: މަރުހަބާ؟ The Arabic question mark is also used in some other right-to-left scripts: N'Ko , Syriac and Adlam . Adlam also has U+1E95F 𞥟 ADLAM INITIAL QUESTION MARK : 𞥟 𞤢𞤤𞤢𞥄 ؟ , 'No?'. Hebrew script is also written right-to-left, but it uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation as
4095-560: The West Syriac Rite under the Byzantine rule. As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity , Classical Syriac spread throughout Asia as far as the South Indian Malabar Coast , and Eastern China , and became the medium of communication and cultural dissemination for the later Arabs , and (to a lesser extent) the other peoples of Parthian and Sasanian empires. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had
4200-464: The X Window System , it can be accessed as a compose sequence of two straight question marks, i.e. pressing Compose ? ? yields ¿ . In classic Mac OS and Mac OS X (macOS), the key combination Option Shift ? produces an inverted question mark. In shell and scripting languages, the question mark is often utilized as a wildcard character : a symbol that can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in
4305-456: The infinitive and the active and passive participles . Syriac has only two true morphological tenses: perfect and imperfect. Whereas these tenses were originally aspectual in Aramaic, they have become a truly temporal past and future tenses respectively. The present tense is usually marked with the participle followed by the subject pronoun . Such pronouns are usually omitted in
Question mark - Misplaced Pages Continue
4410-552: The linguistic homeland of the language in the region of Osroene, was never part of contemporary (Roman) Syria . In the 3rd century, churches in Edessa began to use local Aramaic dialect as the language of worship. Early literary efforts were focused on creation of an authoritative Aramaic translation of the Bible, the Peshitta ( ܦܫܝܛܬܐ Pšīṭtā ). At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian
4515-483: The 10th century, the pitch-defining element (if it ever existed) seems to have been gradually forgotten, so that the "lightning flash" sign (with the stroke sometimes slightly curved) is often seen indifferently at the end of clauses, whether they embody a question or not. In the early 13th century, when the growth of communities of scholars ( universities ) in Paris and other major cities led to an expansion and streamlining of
4620-550: The 1850s, the term question mark is attested: The mark which you are to notice in this lesson is of this shape ? You see it is made by placing a little crooked mark over a period.... The name of this mark is the Question Mark , because it is always put after a question. Sometimes it is called by a longer and harder name. The long and hard name is the Interrogation Point . In English, the question mark typically occurs at
4725-591: The 5th century. In the same time, a growing body of later sources showed that both in Greek, and in native literature, those labels were most commonly used as designations for Aramaic language in general, including its various dialects (both eastern and western), thus challenging the conventional scholarly reduction of the term "Syriac language" to a specific designation for Edessan Aramaic. Such use, that excludes non-Edessan dialects, and particularly those of Western Aramaic provenience, persist as an accepted convention, but in
4830-504: The Arab conquest in the 7th century, vernacular forms of Syriac were gradually replaced during the next centuries by the advancing Arabic language . Having an Aramaic (Syriac) substratum , the regional Arabic dialect ( Mesopotamian Arabic ) developed under the strong influence of local Aramaic (Syriac) dialects, sharing significant similarities in language structure, as well as having evident and stark influences from previous (ancient) languages of
4935-895: The Ourhi Centre was founded by the Assyrian community in the city of Qamishli, to educate teachers in order to make Syriac an additional language to be taught in public schools in the Jazira Region of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria , which then started with the 2016/17 academic year. In April 2023, a team of AI researchers completed the first AI translation model and website for classical Syriac. Many Syriac words, like those in other Semitic languages , belong to triconsonantal roots , collations of three Syriac consonants. New words are built from these three consonants with variable vowel and consonant sets. For example,
5040-496: The Phoenicians all speak Syriac, but with many differences in pronunciation ". Theodoret's regional (provincial) differentiation of Aramaic dialects included an explicit distinction between the "Syrians" (as Aramaic speakers of Syria proper, western of Euphrates ), and the "Osroenians" as Aramaic speakers of Osroene (eastern region, centered in Edessa ), thus showing that dialect of the "Syrians" (Aramaic speakers of proper Syria)
5145-610: The Syriac-speaking world. As a result, Syriac developed distinctive western and eastern varieties. Although remaining a single language with a high level of comprehension between the varieties, the two employ distinctive variations in pronunciation and writing system, and, to a lesser degree, in vocabulary. The Syriac language later split into a western variety, used mainly by the Syriac Orthodox Church in upper Mesopotamia and Syria proper, and an eastern variety used mainly by
5250-399: The Unicode replacement character , usually rendered as a white question mark in a black diamond: U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER . This commonly occurs for apostrophes and quotation marks when they are written with software that uses its own proprietary non-standard code for these characters, such as Microsoft Office 's "smart quotes" . The generic URL syntax allows for
5355-670: The asterisk plus ?* or the degree symbol ° ) to indicate gradations or a continuum of acceptability. Yet others use double question marks ?? to indicate a degree of strangeness between those indicated by a single question mark and that indicated by the combination of question mark and asterisk. In mathematics , " ? " commonly denotes Minkowski's question mark function . Classical Syriac The Syriac language ( / ˈ s ɪr i æ k / SIH -ree-ak ; Classical Syriac : ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ , romanized: Leššānā Suryāyā ), also known natively in its spoken form in early Syriac literature as Edessan ( Urhāyā ),
SECTION 50
#17328487217105460-502: The book-production trade, punctuation was rationalized by assigning the "lightning flash" specifically to interrogatives ; by this time the stroke was more sharply curved and can easily be recognized as the modern question mark. (See, for example, De Aetna [ it ] (1496) printed by Aldo Manuzio in Venice .) In 1598, the English term point of interrogation is attested in an Italian –English dictionary by John Florio . In
5565-447: The case of the third person. This use of the participle to mark the present tense is the most common of a number of compound tenses that can be used to express varying senses of tense and aspect. Syriac also employs derived verb stems such as are present in other Semitic languages. These are regular modifications of the verb's root to express other changes in meaning. The first stem is the ground state, or Pəʿal (this name models
5670-504: The city of Edessa ( Urhay ). Among similar endonymic names with regional connotations, term Nahraya was also used. It was derived from choronym (regional name) Bet-Nahrain , an Aramaic name for Mesopotamia in general. Original endonymic (native) designations, for Aramaic in general ( Aramaya ), and Edessan Aramaic in particular ( Urhaya ), were later (starting from the 5th century) accompanied by another term, exonymic (foreign) in origin: Suryaya (Syrian/Syriac), adopted under
5775-468: The city of Edessa . During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical region of Ancient Syria and throughout the Near East . As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity , it gained a prominent role among Eastern Christian communities that used both Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac rites. Following
5880-440: The consistency of such use was never achieved within the field. Inconsistent use of "Syrian/Syriac" labels in scholarly literature has led some researchers to raise additional questions, related not only to terminological issues but also to some more fundamental (methodological) problems, that were undermining the integrity of the field. Attempts to resolve those issues were unsuccessful, and in many scholarly works, related to
5985-455: The creation of a specific field of Syriac studies , within Aramaic studies . Preference of early scholars towards the use of the Syrian/Syriac label was also relied upon its notable use as an alternative designation for Aramaic language in the " Cave of Treasures ", long held to be the 4th century work of an authoritative writer and revered Christian saint Ephrem of Edessa (d. 373), who
6090-583: The creation of newspapers in written Syriac ( ܟܬܒܢܝܐ Kṯāḇānāyā ) similar to the use of Modern Standard Arabic has been employed since the early decades of the 20th century. Modern forms of literary Syriac have also been used not only in religious literature but also in secular genres, often with Assyrian nationalistic themes. Syriac is spoken as the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox Church , as well as by some of its adherents . Syriac has been recognised as an official minority language in Iraq. It
6195-405: The development of Classical Syriac, the emphatic state became the ordinary form of the noun, and the absolute and construct states were relegated to certain stock phrases (for example, ܒܪ ܐܢܫܐ/ܒܪܢܫܐ , bar nāšā , "man, person", literally "son of man"). In Old and early Classical Syriac, most genitive noun relationships are built using the construct state, but contrary to the genitive case, it
6300-495: The end of a sentence, where it replaces the full stop (period). However, the question mark may also occur at the end of a clause or phrase, where it replaces the comma (see also Question comma ) : or: This is quite common in Spanish , where the use of bracketing question marks explicitly indicates the scope of interrogation. A question mark may also appear immediately after questionable data, such as dates: In Spanish, since
6405-799: The end of syllables (a common alternation in the world's languages) Other cases reflect the widespread habit, among Oceanic languages , to associate voicing with prenasalization : Aftanun olketa! = 'Good afternoon everyone!' Nem blo mi Charles = 'My name is Charles' Hao nao (iu)? ( Iu hao? ) = 'How are you' Wat na nem blo iu? = 'What is your name?' Iu blo wea? = 'Where are you from?' Mi hapi tumas fo mitim iu. = 'I'm pleased to meet you.' Wanem nao lanus iu save? = 'What languages do you know?' Mi olraet nomoa = 'I am all right' Mi gut (nomoa) = 'I am good' Oraet nomoa = 'All right' Ma iu (yu) hao? = 'And how are you?' Tanggio tumas = 'Thank you very much' Pijin, like other languages to which it
SECTION 60
#17328487217106510-439: The end of the 15th century, main terminological issues related to the name and classification of the language known as Edessan Aramaic, and also referred to by several other names combined of Syrian/Syriac labels, remain opened and unsolved. Some of those issues have special sociolinguistic and ethnolinguistic significance for the remaining Neo-Aramaic speaking communities. Since the occurrence of major political changes in
6615-471: The first person dual, trial, and plural pronoun forms. For example, the first-person dual inclusive pronoun, iumitufala , means 'we' (you and me, including the listener), and the first-person dual exclusive pronoun, mitufala , means 'we' (him/her and me, excluding the listener). This dual inclusive pronoun is used quite frequently in the Solomon Islands. It is used most often in religious sermons when
6720-621: The first three centuries of the Common Era , a local Aramaic dialect spoken in the Kingdom of Osroene , centered in Edessa , eastern of Euphrates , started to gain prominence and regional significance. There are about eighty extant early inscriptions, written in Old-Edessan Aramaic, dated to the first three centuries AD, with the earliest inscription being dated to the 6th year AD, and the earliest parchment to 243 AD. All of these early examples of
6825-457: The following words belong to the root ܫܩܠ ( ŠQL ), to which a basic meaning of taking can be assigned: Most Syriac nouns are built from triliteral roots. Nouns carry grammatical gender (masculine or feminine), they can be either singular or plural in number (a very few can be dual) and can exist in one of three grammatical states. These states should not be confused with grammatical cases in other languages. However, very quickly in
6930-627: The functions of the question mark and the exclamation mark , superposing these two marks. Unicode makes available these variants: In computing , the question mark character is represented by ASCII code 63 (0x3F hexadecimal), and is located at Unicode code-point U+003F ? QUESTION MARK ( ? ). The full-width (double-byte) equivalent ( ？ ), is located at code-point U+FF1F ？ FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK . The inverted question mark ( ¿ ) corresponds to Unicode code-point U+00BF ¿ INVERTED QUESTION MARK ( ¿ ), and can be accessed from
7035-566: The influence of a long-standing Greek custom of referring to speakers of Aramaic as Syrians . Among ancient Greeks, term "Syrian language" was used as a common designation for Aramaic language in general, and such usage was also reflected in Aramaic, by subsequent (acquired) use of the term "Suryaya" as the most preferred synonym for "Aramaya" (Aramaic). Practice of interchangeable naming (Aramaya, Urhaya, Nahraya, and Suryaya) persisted for centuries, in common use and also in works of various prominent writers. One of those who used various terms
7140-538: The keyboard in Microsoft Windows on the default US layout by holding down the Alt and typing either 1 6 8 (ANSI) or 0 1 9 1 (Unicode) on the numeric keypad. In GNOME applications on Linux operating systems, it can be entered by typing the hexadecimal Unicode character (minus leading zeros) while holding down both Ctrl and Shift , i.e.: Ctrl Shift B F . In recent XFree86 and X.Org incarnations of
7245-420: The language and its Syrian/Syriac regional origin. Early native speakers and writers used several endonymic terms as designations for their language. In addition to common endonym (native name) for the Aramaic language in general ( Aramaya ), another endonymic term was also used, designating more specifically the local Edessan dialect, known as Urhaya , a term derived directly from the native Aramaic name for
7350-427: The language are non-Christian. As a language of public life and administration in the region of Osroene, Edessan Aramaic was gradually given a relatively coherent form, style and grammar that is lacking in other Aramaic dialects of the same period. Since Old-Edessan Aramaic later developed into Classical Syriac, it was retroactively labeled by western scholars as "Old Syrian/Syriac" or "Proto-Syrian/Syriac", although
7455-573: The left-to-right question mark (e.g. את מדברת עברית? ). The question mark is also used in modern writing in Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Japanese . Usually, it is written as fullwidth form in Chinese and Japanese, in Unicode: U+ FF1F ？ FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK . Fullwidth form is always preferred in official usage. In Korean language , however, halfwidth is used. Japanese has
7560-481: The linguistic self-identification also arose throughout Syriac-speaking diaspora , particularly in European countries (Germany, Sweden, Netherlands). Syriac was the local dialect of Aramaic in Edessa , and evolved under the influence of the Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church into its current form. Before Arabic became the dominant language, Syriac was a major language among Christian communities in
7665-658: The liturgical language of the Syriac Melkites within the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in Antioch and parts of ancient Syria . The Syriac Melkites changed their church's West Syriac Rite to that of Constantinople in the 9th-11th centuries, necessitating new translations of all their Syriac liturgical books. In the English language , the term "Syriac" is used as a linguonym (language name) designating
7770-521: The name " Syriac ", while the existing general code syr, that was until then named " Syriac ", was renamed to " Syriac, Modern ". Within ISO 639 system, large body of unspecific references related to various linguistic uses of the term " Syriac " remained related to the original ISO 639-2 code syr ( Syriac ), but its scope is defined within the ISO 639-3 standard as a macrolanguage that currently includes only some of
7875-481: The nouns they modify. Adjectives are in the absolute state if they are predicative , but agree with the state of their noun if attributive . Thus, ܒܝܫܝ̈ܢ ܫܩ̈ܠܐ , bišin šeqlē , means "the taxes are evil", whereas ܫܩ̈ܠܐ ܒܝ̈ܫܐ , šeqlē ḇišē , means "evil taxes". Most Syriac verbs are built on triliteral roots as well. Finite verbs carry person , gender (except in the first person) and number, as well as tense and conjugation . The non-finite verb forms are
7980-521: The old former Queensland hands many years after their return Plantation languages continued into the 20th century even though the process of blackbirding had ceased. Due to the changing nature of labour traffic there was a divergence of Samoan plantation Pijin and New Guinea Tok Pisin and also other plantation Pijin and Oceanic Pijins such as Bislama and Solomon Pijin. In 1901, there were approximately 10,000 Pacific Islanders working in Australia, most in
8085-411: The old literary and liturgical language, reduction of the term " Classical Syriac " to " Syriac " (only) remained a manner of convenience, even in titles of works, including encyclopedic entries, thus creating a large body of unspecific references, that became a base for the emergence of several new classes of terminological problems at the advent of the informational era . Those problems culminated during
8190-487: The only difference. ?Solomon Aelan hemi barava gudfala kandre, ia man? (' Solomon Islands is a great country, isn't it?') In Armenian , the question mark is a diacritic that takes the form of an open circle and is placed over the stressed vowel of the question word. It is defined in Unicode at U+055E ◌՞ ARMENIAN QUESTION MARK . The Greek question mark (Greek: ερωτηματικό , romanized: erōtīmatikó ) looks like ; . It appeared around
8295-478: The previous subexpression", i.e. an optional element. It can also make a quantifier like {x,y} , + or * match as few characters as possible, making it lazy, e.g. /^.*?px/ will match the substring 165px in 165px 17px instead of matching 165px 17px . In certain implementations of the BASIC programming language, the ? character may be used as a shorthand for the "print" function; in others (notably
8400-490: The process of international standardization of the terms " Syriac " and " Classical Syriac " within the ISO 639 and MARC systems. The term " Classical Syriac " was accepted in 2007 and codified (ISO code: syc ) as a designation for the old literary and liturgical language, thus confirming the proper use of the term. In the same time, within the MARC standard, code syc was accepted as designation for Classical Syriac , but under
8505-705: The question mark (e.g. "What would you like to drink?"). The rhetorical question mark or percontation point (see Irony punctuation ) was invented by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question ; however, it became obsolete in the 17th century. It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it. This character can be represented using U+2E2E ⸮ REVERSED QUESTION MARK . Bracketed question marks can be used for rhetorical questions, for example Oh, really(?) , in informal contexts such as closed captioning . The question mark can also be used as
8610-514: The question mark is mirrored right-to-left from the Latin question mark. In Unicode, two encodings are available: U+061F ؟ ARABIC QUESTION MARK (With bi-directional code AL: Right-to-Left Arabic) and U+2E2E ⸮ REVERSED QUESTION MARK (With bi-directional code Other Neutrals). Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues. In addition,
8715-491: The region. Syriac-influenced Arabic dialects developed among Iraqi Muslims , as well as Iraqi Christians , most of whom descend from native Syriac speakers. Western Syriac is the official language of the West Syriac Rite , practiced by the Syriac Orthodox Church , the Syriac Catholic Church , the Maronite Catholic Church , the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church , the Malabar Independent Syrian Church ,
8820-402: The same preference was adopted by later scholars, with one important distinction: in western scholarly use, Syrian/Syriac label was subsequently reduced from the original Greek designation for Aramaic language in general to a more specific (narrower) designation for Edessan Aramaic language, that in its literary and liturgical form came to be known as Classical Syriac . That reduction resulted in
8925-560: The same time as the Latin one, in the 8th century. It was adopted by Church Slavonic and eventually settled on a form essentially similar to the Latin semicolon . In Unicode , it is separately encoded as U+037E ; GREEK QUESTION MARK , but the similarity is so great that the code point is normalised to U+003B ; SEMICOLON , making the marks identical in practice. In Arabic and other languages that use Arabic script such as Persian , Urdu and Uyghur (Arabic form) , which are written from right to left ,
9030-440: The same time stands in contradiction both with original Greek, and later native (acquired) uses of Syrian/Syriac labels as common designations for Aramaic language in general. Those problems were addressed by prominent scholars, including Theodor Nöldeke (d. 1930) who noted on several occasions that term " Syriac language " has come to have two distinctive meanings, wider and narrower, with first (historical and wider) serving as
9135-526: The second edition of the Ortografía of the Real Academia Española in 1754, interrogatives require both opening ¿ and closing ? question marks. An interrogative sentence, clause, or phrase begins with an inverted question mark ¿ and ends with the question mark ? , as in: Question marks must always be matched, but to mark uncertainty rather than actual interrogation omitting the opening one
9240-482: The shape of the root) form of the verb, which carries the usual meaning of the word. The next is the intensive stem, or Paʿʿel , form of the verb, which usually carries an intensified meaning . The third is the extensive stem, or ʾAp̄ʿel , form of the verb, which is often causative in meaning. Each of these stems has its parallel passive conjugation: the ʾEṯpəʿel , ʾEṯpaʿʿal and ʾEttap̄ʿal respectively. To these six cardinal stems are added
9345-435: The speaker is referring to a relationship between himself/herself and a specific individual in the audience. The question can be between question marks since in yes–no questions, the intonation can be the only difference. In comparison to their original English forms Pijin transitive verbs have an additional morpheme in the form of a suffix. To the English speaker, these morphemes sound like VERB + 'him' or 'them.' The suffix
9450-460: The spoken language of much of the region, excepting northern Iraq and Mount Lebanon. The Mongol invasions and conquests of the 13th century, and the religiously motivated massacres of Syriac Christians by Timur further contributed to the rapid decline of the language. In many places outside of Upper Mesopotamia and Mount Lebanon , even in liturgy, it was replaced by Arabic. Revivals of literary Syriac in recent times have led to some success with
9555-405: The spread of Pijin. With Pax Britannica and the advent of the local plantation system in the Solomon Islands, the use of Pijin was reactivated and the language started to spread in the country. It also acquired more Solomonic linguistic characteristics. Throughout the 20th century Pijin kept spreading: historical events such as Maasina Rule and WWII, and social changes such as urbanisation, played
9660-531: The spread of Syriac Christianity, it also became a liturgical language of eastern Christian communities as far as India and China . It flourished from the 4th to the 8th century, and continued to have an important role during the next centuries, but by the end of the Middle Ages it was gradually reduced to liturgical use, since the role of vernacular language among its native speakers was overtaken by several emerging Neo-Aramaic languages . Classical Syriac
9765-500: The sugar cane industry in Queensland and northern New South Wales, many working as indentured labourers . The Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 , Parliament of Australia was the facilitation instrument used to deport approximately 7,500 Pacific Islanders. Up until 1911 approximately 30,000 Solomon Islanders were indentured labourers to Queensland, Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia. The use of Pijin by churches and missionaries assisted in
9870-538: The symbol " ? " has a special meaning in many programming languages . In C -descended languages, ? is part of the ?: operator, which is used to evaluate simple boolean conditions . In C# 2.0, the ? modifier is used to handle nullable data types and ?? is the null coalescing operator . In the POSIX syntax for regular expressions , such as that used in Perl and Python , ? stands for "zero or one instance of
9975-401: The term "Syriac" is preferred over the alternative form "Syrian", since the latter is much more polysemic and commonly relates to Syria in general. That distinction is used in English as a convention and does not exist on the ancient endonymic level. Several compound terms like "Syriac Aramaic", "Syrian Aramaic" or "Syro-Aramaic" are also used, thus emphasizing both the Aramaic nature of
10080-512: The third and fourth centuries, local Edessan Aramaic language became the vehicle of the specific Christian culture that came to be known as the Syriac Christianity . Because of theological differences, Syriac-speaking Christians diverged during the 5th century into the Church of the East that followed the East Syriac Rite under the Persian rule, and the Syriac Orthodox Church that followed
10185-420: The usage is increasing. Chinese also has a spoken indicator of questions, which is 吗 (ma). However, the question mark should always be used after 吗 when asking questions. Some other scripts have a specific question mark: French orthography specifies a narrow non-breaking space before the question mark. (e.g., " Que voulez-vous boire ? "); in English orthography , no space appears in front of
10290-612: The wider historical region of Syria should not be overlooked by improper and unspecific use of Syrian/Syriac labels. Diversity of Aramaic dialects was recorded by Theodoret of Cyrus (d. c. 466), who accepted Syrian/Syriac labels as common Greek designations for the Aramaic language in general, stating that " the Osroënians, the Syrians, the people of the Euphrates, the Palestinians, and
10395-419: The written language or the book language ' ) or simply kṯoḇonōyō , or kṯowonōyō , while in its East-Syriac tradition, it is known as leššānā ʔatīqā ( lit. ' the old language ' ) or saprāyā ( lit. ' scribal or literary ' ). It emerged during the first century AD from a local Eastern Aramaic dialect that was spoken in the ancient region of Osroene , centered in
10500-635: Was known to be different from that of the "Osroenians" (speakers of Edessan Aramaic). Native ( endonymic ) use of the term Aramaic language (Aramaya/Oromoyo) among its speakers has continued throughout the medieval period, as attested by the works of prominent writers, including the Oriental Orthodox Patriarch Michael of Antioch (d. 1199). Since the proper dating of the Cave of Treasures , modern scholars were left with no indications of native Aramaic adoption of Syrian/Syriac labels before
10605-592: Was producing the most treasured collection of poetry and theology in the Edessan Aramaic language, that later became known as Syriac. In 489, many Syriac-speaking Christians living in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire fled to the Sasanian Empire to escape persecution and growing animosity with Greek-speaking Christians. The Christological differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian Schism in
10710-471: Was theologian Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), who was referring to the language as " Syrian or Aramaic " (Suryāyā awkēt Ārāmāyā), and also as Urhāyā , when referring to Edessan Aramaic, or Naḥrāyā when pointing to the region of Bet-Nahrain (Aramaic term for Mesopotamia in general). Plurality of terms among native speakers (ārāmāyā, urhāyā, naḥrāyā, and suryāyā) was not reflected in Greek and Latin terminology, that preferred Syrian/Syriac designation, and
10815-435: Was thus believed to be proponent of various linguistic notions and tendencies expressed in the mentioned work. Since modern scholarly analyses have shown that the work in question was written much later ( c. 600) by an unknown author, several questions had to be reexamined. In regard to the scope and usage of Syrian/Syriac labels in linguistic terminology, some modern scholars have noted that diversity of Aramaic dialects in
10920-835: Was used for the sugar cane plantation labour trade in Queensland , Samoa , Fiji and New Caledonia . At the beginning of the trade period, the Australian planters started to recruit in the Loyalty Islands early 1860s, Gilbert Islands and the Banks Islands around the mid-1860s, New Hebrides and the Santa Cruz Islands in the early 1870s, and New Ireland and New Britain from 1879 when recruiting became difficult. Around 13,000 Solomon Islanders were taken to Queensland during this labour trade period. The ( Kanaka ) pidgin language
11025-522: Was used on the plantations and became the lingua franca spoken between Melanesian workers (the Kanakas, as they were called) and European overseers. When Solomon Islanders came back to the Solomons at the end of their contract, or when they were forcefully repatriated at the end of the labour trade period (1904), they brought pidgin to the Solomon Islands. Old people today still remember the stories that were told by
#709290