Using Question marks in Chinese

[Shelley]

I have been using a new text book and it has brought my attention the use of question marks in Chinese. When a sentence ends with ma 吗 it is obviously a question and no question mark is needed.

 

Using the .....shi4 是bu2 不 shi是4....question structure or other question structures that don't use ma 吗 should you use a question mark?

 

i don't think that the question mark is a Chinese punctuation mark, in fact I think there are only a few, the full stop and Chinese brackets, are the only two i know.

 

I am reluctant to use the question mark as the structure makes it clear it is a question and to my eye it doesn't look right with characters.

 

Is there a rule about it or is it a matter of choice?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

[li3wei1]

I've seen plenty of question marks, in material that doesn't seem to be prepared for Westerners or copied from them. Maybe it's not an ancient Chinese punctuation mark, but it's certainly part of Chinese now.

[tooironic]

Regardless of whether there is 吗 at the end of the sentence or not, question marks are compulsory in modern Chinese. If you left one off in a high school essay you can be sure the teacher would correct you. It is true though that this punctuation mark did not exist in classical Chinese - but then again, so did little else in the way of punctuation.

[Shelley]

Ok , so now question marks are part of everyday chinese, but if you wrote a passage, short story etc without them, would people not understand that these were questions?

 

I want to clarify how necessary they have become, and would I be actually wrong to leave them out.

 

When I first started learning 20 years or so ago my first teacher was a British lady who was born and grew up in Shanghai and had to leave in the 1940s as a young girl of about 16. The Chinese language was her passion. ( I only mention this to give background to her) She told us that we didn't need question marks. 

 

Have things change in the last 20 years or was she wrong all those years ago?

 

I will start using them if it has become the correct way of doing it.

 

Thanks for your help.

[tooironic]

They're pretty much used the same as English. Can you understand a question that doesn't have a question mark. Of course you can can't you. But that doesn't stop it from looking awkward does it.

[Webber King]

In fact, In ancient China, people did NOT use marks when writing, they must read the sentence according to the meaning, where to stop, and where to ask. 

In modern Chinese, we usually use '?' in these situation (not only but includes):

【哪】一件衣服比较好？ '哪' means 'Which'

你去【哪里】？ '哪里' means 'Where' or 'Which place'

你想吃【什么】？ '什么' means 'What'

你【怎么了】？ '怎么了' means 'What's up'

我们【什么时候】出发？ '什么时候' means 'What time' or 'When'

我们该【怎样】做？ '怎样' means 'How', it's the abbreviation of '怎么样', '怎' often means 'what' or 'how', it's used to describe something unknown.

这件衣服【多少】钱？ '多少' means 'How much'

今天【几】号？ '几' means you are asking the number

我看起来很帅，【是不是】？ '是不是' means 'Yes or not'

你也这么认为，【不是吗】？ '不是吗' means like 'don't you', and it can be used to any body, such as 'I', 'You', 'He', 'She', etc,. It can also be used with 'do', 'be', 'have', etc,.

你想喝水【吗】？  '吗' means somebody is asking

你吃饭了【么】？ '么' means somebody is asking, but its mood is weaker than '吗'. When you use '么', you probably  won't get answered.

 

Maybe you are confused now, but remember, in the situation of asking, you should always use '?'.

The words I have listed is the common words for asking, but it's not the all.

[li3wei1]

you dont need capital letters apostrophes or anything else really

ee cummings got pretty far without using all that extra baggage

[roddy]

Perhaps the simplest way to approach it - are there any differences with standard English usage? I can't think of any. 

 

Shelley, which textbook is this and what's it actually telling you?

[Shelley]

Thank you Webber King for your detailed reply. I am aware of these "asking or question word/s" and realize there are the same kind of things in english. In english we are used to using question marks even though a sentence beginning with a "question word" such who or what makes it obvious in most cases that this is a question.

 

roddy the text book is from The Total Chinese Learning Kit  isbn 981-3068-03-5.

 

It isn't telling me to use them or not, but the text contain questions and question marks were used. This made wonder if this was a new thing as some of my older books don't use them. I also wondered if they were only used for the benefit of the learner.

 

It is not supposed to be a big thing, I just wondered if it was common practice to use them in Chinese.

 

Thanks to all who replied.

[skylee]

Have things change in the last 20 years or was she wrong all those years ago?

 

Things have not changed in the last 20 years.  I started learning Chinese (much) more than 20 years ago when I was a kid.  I was never told that the use of question marks in Chinese was not necessary or that using it in Chinese was a new phenomenon.

 

PS - If we can find some images of old newspapers of the 1920s to 1940s, we will be able to see how punctuation marks were used in Chinese back then and perhaps we can then decide categoraically if she was wrong all those years ago.

[skylee]

Here you can find images of a book published in 1935 and see the use of question marks -> http://world.bookinlife.net/product-247269.html

 

Here you can find the images of Zhang Ailing's manuscripts of about 1946 and the use of question marks (second image, fifth last line and third image, 9th-10th lines) -> http://www.zonaeuropa.com/culture/c20100403_1.htm

[lvn]

Actually anciet WarringStates Chinese manuscripts seem to display a system of punctuation, but it doesn't include question or exclamation marks; its functions are not quite clear yet nor were they universally accepted.

Turning to modern Chinese, question marks are required whenever a question is to be marked.

[Shelley]

From Wikipedia

"Chinese punctuation uses a different set of punctuation marks from European languages. Chinese punctuation only became an integral part of the written language in the 20th century, as Western punctuation marks were adopted. Before that, Eastern Asian cultures didn't use punctuation.^[1] The first book to be printed with modern punctuation wasOutline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史大綱) by Hu Shi (胡適), published in 1919. Scholars did,^[2] however, annotate texts with symbols resembling the modern '。' and '、' (see below) to indicate full-stops and pauses, respectively.^{[citation needed]} Traditional poetry and calligraphy maintains the punctuation-free style.^{[citation needed]"}

 

^{So I suppose she may have been taught by someone who was old enough to not use punctuation as a normal thing.}

^{She did tell us her chinese teacher in china was very old. She was born in the thirties, so i suppose her teacher may have been born in the late 1800's.}

^{He also may have personally not used them and so passed it on.}

 

^{Well I don't doubt or disbelieve anyone, I am wiling to adopt the use of them if this is how it is done, I just didn't want to be using them incorrectly.}

 

^{Thanks to everyone for your help and clarification.}

 

 

 

[OneEye]

Actually anciet WarringStates Chinese manuscripts seem to display a system of punctuation, but it doesn't include question or exclamation marks; its functions are not quite clear yet nor were they universally accepted.

 

Source? I know that, at least for the text I'm currently researching, they put a heavy black mark at the end of each 章, but I don't think I'd call that punctuation.

[lvn]

True. I never said that those marks can be accurately deemed as punctuation marks. However, we also cannot be sure that they mark the end of a zhang 章. The reasons are the following:

 

1) We first have to establish what is a zhang in a Warring States manuscripts and how it can be distinguished from a juan 卷 or a pian 篇 (a very complicated issue given the composite nature of Chinese manuscripts)

2) If you check the Guodian Laozi (slips 1-2. 郭店出墓竹简: 3) you will see black marks roughly corresponding to the end of each of the received text verses. However, this pattern is not repeated homogeneously throughout the text.

3) There are hook-shaped marks that seem to signal the end of a larger textual block within a certain text (check Xing zi ming chu 性自命出 slips 35; 49; 67. 郭店出墓竹简: 64-6), other that mark a hewen 合文, two characters joined together in a single structure (Kongzi Shi lun 孔子诗论 slip 1. 上海博物馆藏战国楚竹书: 13) or for redoubling characters (Xingqing lun 性请论 29. Ibid: 99. See also an interesting example in 性请论 39, where a character bearing the sign of reduplication actually stands for two character with the same pronunciation).

4) All these marks, except reduplication marks, seem to have been used quite arbitrary, without a common shared set of rules. But of course, this still has to wait for further research.

[OneEye]

Welcome to Chinese Forums. I like you already.

[lvn]

Thanks for the welcome ;)

[roddy]

And check out the Classical Chinese forum - it gets a bit quiet, but perhaps you can liven it up.

[lingo-ling]

Question marks are supposed to be used with questions in modern Chinese. But unlike English, question marks are also often used with indirect questions, like the following:

"Issues such as why the sea is boiling hot? and whether pigs have wings? were discussed at the meeting."