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Forums - Question mark at the end of sentence?

Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese



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coin
Level: 368

Maybe this is a bit of a ridiculous question, but I am wondering about it, so here we go:

Do Japanese language use question marks at the end of question sentences?
(I mean in formal Japanese with the desu, masu etc, not how we text with friends etc.)

I notice that the example sentences here at Renshuu often uses question marks at the end, but as far as I can recall back in the day (approx 10 years ago), when I went to Japanese language school and studied it in uni, I can not recall us writing them? The particle ka in itself was enough for it to indicate that it was a question, IF I recall it correctly. I have not studied Japanese for years and I am just getting back into it, so I might have a total brain-fart here and have actually used question marks for formal Japanese in the past. Or maybe this is a fairly new thing? A recent change since language is dynamic?

Edit: I did some googling, and a lot of sources still say question marks are not used in formal Japanese - but these sources also seem to be 3 - 5 years old. (Example from Tofugu: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-punctuation/)

3
4 years ago
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apples
Level: 6

Yup like you found question marks are not used it formal Japanese; just か plus 。is good. In casual Japanese question marks ok though.

1
3 years ago
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TansuiNingyo
Level: 470

I have a question related to this. The way I understood it, if there's a question word in the sentence, like , then an additional か isn't necessary to identify it as a question. But occasionally I see sentences with both a question word and か...

0
3 years ago
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マイコー
Level: 256

You can drop the か in some casual situations and short-form verbs (たべる instead of たべます), but it would not sound right to say べます。

べる? which a rising intonation at the end would work in casual situations, though!

1
3 years ago
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Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese


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