question
We have been having another look at our question words and it is really hard to design ones that make sense in all contexts. If you are working in a European language such as English you will be used to the concept of the ‘wh’ words and there is a particular order in which they tend to appear as mentioned by Mira Shah “what,” “where,” “why,” “how,” “when,” then “which.” “Where” is earlier in English and “who” is earlier in Italian.”
ARASAAC offer a collection of symbols for them
what
where
why
how
when
which
But then one has to think about the context and it might be time or an action. So should one add more clues or just have what + Time as a separate question mark with a clock face?
The general consensus amongst the symbol sets seems to be that ‘what’ is just a question mark and the other question words come with a clue but that can be difficult when the word in Arabic is combined and there needs to be a difference in the gender…
what
what is your name (F)?
what is your name (M)?
where
why (F)
What time is it?
It seems that we need to have many more question words that are linked to relevant settings but they can cause confusion, such as ‘when?’ and ‘what is the time?’ or ‘what time is it?’
when
There do not seem to be any articles on this subject and as different languages have very different ways of asking questions we will go on developing more symbols so there is lots of choice!
Any ideas for ‘which’?
how are you?