Why do people use “why do people?” instead of “why do people” to ask questions?
In formal texts you normally just use か and a full stop but there are a good number of reasons why people use question marks
1. Casual questions often omit か, even with です and ます occasionally
2. Sometimes か *isn’t* a question, it’s more like ‘Oh, I see’. そうですか？, in more casual contexts, feels like ‘Really?’ to me, while そうですか。 feels like ‘I see’
3. Punctuation and grammar are not the same thing. English questions have a different word order from statements (‘Bananas are yellow.’ vs ‘Are bananas yellow?’), yet we use question marks anyway.
Language isn’t a perfect, compressed, zero duplication communication method
why questions are usually a waste of time
Person 1: Why are you here?
Person 2: You know damn well why I am here.
It *doesn’t* already act as a question mark. With statement intonation
> そうですか。
means “oh I get it.”
Written Japanese didn’t always have a question mark so you can see questions ending in a full stop, especially in more traditional or formal writing style, but there’s definitely a difference in speech.
In casual speech か is actually more common with statements than with questions.
Isn’t it the same case in English. Isn’t structure of the questions in English is specific as well. Would you understand that all of my sentences so far were in fact questions without questions marks. Well it’s kinda the same thing in Japanese.
Because reading Japanese is already hard enough, adding a ? Mark at the end of か particle when used as a question isn’t so redundant when you see a wall of Kanji, or even worse, a wall of hiragana.
¿Why do Spanish speakers need two question marks? ¿Isn’t one enough?
Influence from Western languages led to some people using a “?” in casual situations. Proper written Japanese doesn’t use it with ですか, like you mentioned.
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Why do people use “why do people?” instead of “why do people” to ask questions?
In formal texts you normally just use か and a full stop but there are a good number of reasons why people use question marks
1. Casual questions often omit か, even with です and ます occasionally
2. Sometimes か *isn’t* a question, it’s more like ‘Oh, I see’. そうですか？, in more casual contexts, feels like ‘Really?’ to me, while そうですか。 feels like ‘I see’
3. Punctuation and grammar are not the same thing. English questions have a different word order from statements (‘Bananas are yellow.’ vs ‘Are bananas yellow?’), yet we use question marks anyway.
Language isn’t a perfect, compressed, zero duplication communication method
why questions are usually a waste of time
Person 1: Why are you here?
Person 2: You know damn well why I am here.
It *doesn’t* already act as a question mark. With statement intonation
> そうですか。
means “oh I get it.”
Written Japanese didn’t always have a question mark so you can see questions ending in a full stop, especially in more traditional or formal writing style, but there’s definitely a difference in speech.
In casual speech か is actually more common with statements than with questions.
Isn’t it the same case in English. Isn’t structure of the questions in English is specific as well. Would you understand that all of my sentences so far were in fact questions without questions marks. Well it’s kinda the same thing in Japanese.
Because reading Japanese is already hard enough, adding a ? Mark at the end of か particle when used as a question isn’t so redundant when you see a wall of Kanji, or even worse, a wall of hiragana.
¿Why do Spanish speakers need two question marks? ¿Isn’t one enough?
Influence from Western languages led to some people using a “?” in casual situations. Proper written Japanese doesn’t use it with ですか, like you mentioned.