# inverted question mark / inverted exclamation mark



## jancho

Hello.

How would you say 

¿ = inverted question mark
¡ = inverted exclamation mark

in Finnish?

I mean these two characters: ¿ / ¡. They are used e.g. in Spanish.

suggestions:

¿ = _inverted kysymysmerkki _(OR: _kääntyi kysymysmerkki_)
¡ = _inverted huutomerkki_

Thank you.


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## dinji

Nurinpäinen kysymysmerkki
Nurinpäinen huutomerkki

This does not sound familiar at all because we don't use these marks, but I checked in a dictionary


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## Hakro

"Nurinpäinen" sounds very strange to my ear, and The Modern Finnish Dictionary (which is several decades old) doesn't know this word at all, nor does any of my other dictionaries. I'm not saying that it's exactly wrong but I would prefer:

ylösalainen kysymysmerkki
ylösalainen huutomerkki

This term "ylösalainen" is used in many grammatical contexts, for example here. Also Google gives you only 3 examples of "nurinpäinen kysymysmerkki" but 192 examples of "ylösalainen kysymysmerkki".


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## rioshin

Also in use here in Finland are the words _käännetty kysymysmerkki_ for the ¿-sign and _käännetty huutomerkki_ for the ¡-sign.

The variants with the word _nurinpäinen_ I haven't heard used at all, and only seldom have I heard _ylösalainen_ versions used about them.


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## Hakro

"Käännetty kysymysmerkki" sounds good but it gets only one google hit, and even this page couldn't be found.


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## rioshin

That's the problem, many times: no hits, although it is in quite common usage. For example, these terms are used in the document on the ISO-Latin-1 character set by Jukka Korpela (I can't yet post links here), which can quite easily be found by searching for _käännetty kysymysmerkki_ without the quotes. Of course, searching for that leads to quite a few hits more, of which most have nothing to do with the symbol we're talking about.


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## Hakro

I can give the link you probably mean, and I admit that Mr. Korpela is a real professional; the problem is that he seems to think that he's the only person who knows the correct Finnish language. Anyway, in most cases he's right.


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## dinji

dinji said:


> Nurinpäinen kysymysmerkki
> Nurinpäinen huutomerkki
> 
> This does not sound familiar at all because we don't use these marks, but I checked in a dictionary


In fact the dictionary I referred to: (http://www.euroword.fi/tuotteet_giga.html) gives both:

Spanish open question mark=
nurinpäinen kysymysmerkki [¿]
ylösalainen kysymysmerkki [¿]
- - - - - 
Spanish open exclamation mark=
nurinpäinen huutomerkki [¡]
ylösalainen huutomerkki [¡]

BUT

Inverse question mark=
ylösalainen kysymysmerkki [¿]
- - - - -
Inverse exclamation mark=
ylösalainen huutomerkki [¡]


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