On Some Possible Differences between Punctuation Marks in the Chinese and Spanish Languages

Abstract

Languages vary in spelling and grammar. Starting from Didactics in the field of Language and Applied Linguistics, our research is conducted on suprasegmental features: contrastive analysis for future Spanish teachers to native Mandarin speakers. Punctuation marks are essential for correctly understanding any written text in any language. However, they are not the same for each language, nor do they have the same usage or form. This work formulates a research proposal to compare the following punctuation marks in Chinese and Spanish: period or full stop, comma, question marks, and hyphen, which are the most commonly used and, above all, because the differences between them are more representative. To achieve this objective, it starts from the deficiencies in the use of these marks in both languages and reflection on the historical ignorance regarding their usage, form, and possible similarities between Chinese and Spanish segments. We conclude with the idea that the formal dissimilarity between certain Spanish and Chinese punctuation marks, such as the full stop and the question mark, does not cause extraordinary difficulties for Chinese speakers in acquiring their correct use in Spanish. Those signs whose forms share similarities, such as the comma and quotation marks, do represent acquisition difficulties. In order to specify the scope of this phenomenon on punctuation, in the future it will logically be necessary to study more punctuation signs, such as semicolons, colons, as well as ellipses.