Exclamation points in non-European languages?

Factual Questions
1

Today I saw a photo of a fan at a US sporting event who was holding a poster written in Japanese. He had two exclamation points at the end. This got me wondering: do non-European languages (Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, etc.) use exclamation points, question marks, semicolons, etc.?

2

Well, the Khoisan have to use lots of exclamation points whenever they write something down. :wink:

3

In short, “yes,” and they’re usually the same as the ones used in European languages. More accurately, usually the same as the ones used in English, as you’ll note differences in the use of such marks even in Spanish, French, German, etc.

That’s for languages with alphabets… I’m sure ideograph language speaking Dopers will be along to expound upon that.

4

The exclamation mark is a letter in the written form of certain African “click” languages, such as Xhosa (or !Xhosa).

See the South African coat of armscoa.html), with the motto “!ke e:/xarra//ke”, which is not a URL but means “Unity in Diversity” in Khoisan.

I once read a scientific paper of which one of the authors had the name !Nowasek or something similar.

5

Exclamation points are used in modern Hebrew, but not in older stuff (predating the Hebrew revival circa 1900), or at least not that I’ve seen. (I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, though.) Are there non-European languages that used exclamation points (or semicolons, for that matter) before major exposure to European languages? If not, which European language evolved that sort of stuff first?

6

As you saw, Japanese uses the exclamation point, but only informally. You’ll likely not see it if you’re reading a serious novel, magazine, etc. They’re frequent on signs, e-mail and such, though. When they’re not used, you figure out the intonation by the context. This holds true for question marks, too. Also, Japanese has sentence final particles, which are short words tacked on the end of sentences that change the tone. For instance:
Oishii desu. -> It tastes good.
Oishii desu yo. -> Trust me, this tastes good!
Oishii desu ka. -> Does this taste good?
Oishii desu ne -> This is good, isn’t it.