this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know you already got it but a few others came to my mind:

Finnish, which not a tonal language:

  • Sinä pidät kahvista. (“You like coffee.”)
  • Pidätkö kahvista? ("You like coffee?")

Japanese:

  • Anata wa kōhī ga sukidesu. ("You like coffee.")
  • Kōhī wa sukidesu ka? ("You like coffee?")

I think you'll find the pattern of question words/suffixes in nearly every language that is not explicitly tonal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah that's initially why I thought there was no difference to Spanish. But the difference is Spanish actually doesn't have an option where you switch subject and verb. Didn't know that :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh. Very good point. I did not know that either.