8 ms·

Map of quotation marks in European languages

85 points by cbolton 6y ago

sillyquiet 6y ago
What a coincidence to see this on HN right now. I was JUST putting together a feature that has a bit of quoted text and I was wondering if I needed to put in a localization request to my company's localization group. Now I know!.
peteretep 6y ago
I’d recommend the Wikipedia page for anyone interested in more details https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark
maw 6y ago
Half-relevant: I really like when dashes are used for dialogue. I think the way it's done in Spanish (and other languages that, alas, I cannot read) is especially stylish. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash
- augusto-moura 6y ago
  It's also used in Portuguese, but only in specific genres of literature (mostly in screenplays scripts), common romances rarely use it
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  TIL. I thought that was standard in English as well. It is news to me that it is not. Out of curiosity, what is the standard English format for such dialogues?
  - Liquid_Fire 6y ago
    In English you usually use quotes. The linked Wikipedia section has some examples in English, alongside the Russian/Hungarian/Finnish examples: > “You don't seem to be anything special,” said Korkala almost sadly, “but there's no help to it.” Another thing to note is that if the quotation spans multiple paragraphs, you repeat the opening quote at the start of each paragraph (but not the closing one - it only appears at the end of the last paragraph).
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      That explains why I always wondered English books and their translations use "said" and its variations way more than books written in the other languages I speak. Thanks for the explanation
- j1elo 6y ago
  Note it's an "em dash", longer than a typical dash or hyphen. I've seen them used also as kind of a replacement for parentheses. Sometimes a phrase benefits from —but doesn't strictly require— an extra clarification.
- wiredfool 6y ago
  I love how the dialog in each of the languages in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignotia series have their own quotation marks.
oblio 6y ago
I think in Romanian, due to import of US equipment (PCs, keyboards, etc.), we've just given up. We just use " " everywhere.
- kords 6y ago
  Indeed, online publications and governmental agencies seem to have adopted " ".
Analemma_ 6y ago
The bit about a gradual migration towards English-style quotes due to the gentle but inexorable pressure of keyboards and software lacking the proper native equivalent is interesting and a bit depressing. I wonder if over time there will be a drift away from diacritics and non-English characters (like ß) for the same reason.
- roussanoff 6y ago
  I actually have the opposite take. The use of "X" instead of «X» in Russia started with the typewriters, not the computers. Apple added the correct quotation marks in iOS 11, and you could see how people very quickly switched to using them on social media. The software helped people rediscover the correct symbols and drop the typewriter-era bad habits, all it took was a small software upgrade.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    On iOS, " is automatically auto corrected to « for me. Are people switching voluntarily or because it is the new default?
    - roussanoff 6y ago
      If you are using the Russian keyboard, it's the new default (since iOS 11). Before that, you had to long-press the " to get it (along with ˝, „ and all these other marks. Interestingly, the computer keyboards are stuck with the old layouts. You can't buy a Russian keyboard with the right quotation marks. I am using a custom layout by Ilya Birman [1] that makes a nice remapping with «» available quickly. [1] https://ilyabirman.ru/projects/typography-layout/ https://ilyabirman.ru/projects/typography-layout/
- ploika 6y ago
  Irish lost the overdot diacritic in the move away from traditional Irish type around the 1940s, but it will never lose the acute accent (síne fada) because the meaning of a word is completely different if you drop it. Eg: Féar - grass. Fear - man. Cás - case. Cas - turn. Lóndubh - (nonsense) black lunch. Londubh - blackbird.
wlll 6y ago
I'm curious about the source here. I've always been taught (mid 40s, UK) to use "" not '', well before US English became readily accessible on the Internet.
- rexpress 6y ago
  I'm starting to doubt myself, but that was my understanding too. Furthermore "..." denotes a direct quote, whereas '...' can mean that the quote is indirect/paraphrased.
gnulinux 6y ago
Really interesting how Turkish and English are the only major languages that predominantly use "" as opposed to anything else (well, UK uses '' too though). I wonder how that cultural interaction happened or whether it's coincidental. Turkish alphabet is mostly based on German and French alphabets (with a certain dose of creativity) and Turkish language was heavily influenced by French in 19th century. So it's interesting that they don't use ,,'' or <<>>
- augusto-moura 6y ago
  Outside Europe I rarely see <<>>, in fact I never saw <<>> on the internet even on European sites, truth be told I rarely read any websites from Europe that are not in English so my opinion might be biased
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    I've definitely seen ,,'' reading German literature (e.g. Kafka) and <<>> reading French literature. You're right about internet though, that is indeed interesting.
    - MayeulC 6y ago
      While this is the prevalent quotation mark used in France, " starts to catch on a bit. In my opinion, it is mainly due to the fact that « and » are not present on French keyboard layouts (and rather rare in general): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Keyboard_layouts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Keyboard_layout... Another issue is that you are supposed to type a non-braking space inside, which is a hassle, and often not present on keyboards either. Word processors usually take care of both these issues, replacing " with the appropriate (opening or closing) guillemet + space. Spaces are also used in Switzerland, but narrow (&nnbsp; instead of  ).
    - veddox 6y ago
      „“ is standard German usage and taught for handwriting. Angular quotation marks are a bit old-fashioned, and are usually found in (old) books.
kace91 6y ago
There's a lot of generational change due to the use of computers in writing, in general. For example, in Spanish, when I was a kid it was a given fact that exclamations and questions went between marks (¿? and ¡! respectively). Nowadays it's extremely rare to see opening marks - they exist in very formal contexts like books or newspapers, but even emails in the workplace got rid of them, and using them on social media or messaging apps would be just as weird as signing the message at the end.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  Similarly in French, some accents are casually going away and certain differences are also slowly eroding (for example in English you put no space between words and punctuation while in French you do[1], but a lot of French stuff online is written English-style nowadays). Internet in western countries really is creating some kind of English-centered shockwave. It's true (to a much lesser extent) in other languages. Japanese internet slang[2] is still very Japanese but has stuff directly borrowed or adapted from English for a lot of new tech. I'm getting into sci-fi territory now, but I think the Belta Creole[3] of "The Expanse" shows a cool futuristic take on a blend of languages where English still has the bulk of the real estate. [1] https://www.francaisfacile.com/exercices/exercice-francais-2/exercice-francais-115768.php https://www.francaisfacile.com/exercices/exercice-francais-2... [2] https://www.fluentu.com/blog/japanese/japanese-internet-slang/ https://www.fluentu.com/blog/japanese/japanese-internet-slan... [3] https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Belter_Creole https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Belter_Creole
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    Does French not have problems with different words that if the accents are removed get written the same way, but have incompatible meanings? Portuguese is full of those, and it's a major source of resistance on changing the language in Brazil. (Although Brazilian resistance may look like plain acceptance from French standards.)
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Not so much. French tends to have words that are pronounced the same but are written differently thanks to all the silent letters and combinations that are pronounced the same: vers, verre, vert. mer, mère, maire. In writing you can usually do away with all the accents (many of them are grammatical or the strictly correct spelling but without changing the pronunciation and with little change of the 'look' of the word) without problems.
algesten 6y ago
I don't understand where they got this data from. Double quotation marks is very much the standard in UK press, why are they claiming single is preferred?
- ableal 6y ago
  I think single quotes are still prevalent in books.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
akfaew 6y ago
I'm from Poland and I've never once seen anyone use << >>
- jwilk 6y ago
  «» are not general-purpose quotation marks; they are used pretty much only in dictionaries and poems. We also use »« as second-level quotes. See: https://sjp.pwn.pl/zasady/98-Cudzyslow;629866.html https://sjp.pwn.pl/zasady/98-Cudzyslow;629866.html
niek_pas 6y ago
I am from the Netherlands. The use of low opening quotation marks („hello world") is extremely uncommon and generally considered archaic — so much so that I forgot they even existed until I read this article.
- tgv 6y ago
  I was just putting my books back on the shelves, and I've got two copies of De Kleine Johannes, one printed in 1919, and one printed in 1983. The first one has the „low quotation” marks, the last one single, ‘high quotation’ marks, but they are mirrored (the first one is a sort of upside-down comma).
abeppu 6y ago
I had not realized there were languages where angled quotations pointed inwards towards the quoted content. I wonder if there are legitimate cases (e.g. a French style guide discussing German punctuation?) of an outward-pointing angled quotation-mark language quoting an inward-pointing angled quotation-mark language or vice versa where it's ambiguous where a quote ends?

85 points by cbolton 6y ago

What a coincidence to see this on HN right now. I was JUST putting together a feature that has a bit of quoted text and I was wondering if I needed to put in a localization request to my company's localization group. Now I know!.

peteretep 6y ago

I’d recommend the Wikipedia page for anyone interested in more details https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark

maw 6y ago

Half-relevant: I really like when dashes are used for dialogue. I think the way it's done in Spanish (and other languages that, alas, I cannot read) is especially stylish. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotation_dash

augusto-moura 6y ago
It's also used in Portuguese, but only in specific genres of literature (mostly in screenplays scripts), common romances rarely use it
smnrchrds 6y ago
TIL. I thought that was standard in English as well. It is news to me that it is not. Out of curiosity, what is the standard English format for such dialogues?
- Liquid_Fire 6y ago
  In English you usually use quotes. The linked Wikipedia section has some examples in English, alongside the Russian/Hungarian/Finnish examples: > “You don't seem to be anything special,” said Korkala almost sadly, “but there's no help to it.” Another thing to note is that if the quotation spans multiple paragraphs, you repeat the opening quote at the start of each paragraph (but not the closing one - it only appears at the end of the last paragraph).
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    That explains why I always wondered English books and their translations use "said" and its variations way more than books written in the other languages I speak. Thanks for the explanation
j1elo 6y ago
Note it's an "em dash", longer than a typical dash or hyphen. I've seen them used also as kind of a replacement for parentheses. Sometimes a phrase benefits from —but doesn't strictly require— an extra clarification.
wiredfool 6y ago
I love how the dialog in each of the languages in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignotia series have their own quotation marks.

oblio 6y ago

I think in Romanian, due to import of US equipment (PCs, keyboards, etc.), we've just given up. We just use " " everywhere.

kords 6y ago
Indeed, online publications and governmental agencies seem to have adopted " ".

Analemma_ 6y ago

The bit about a gradual migration towards English-style quotes due to the gentle but inexorable pressure of keyboards and software lacking the proper native equivalent is interesting and a bit depressing. I wonder if over time there will be a drift away from diacritics and non-English characters (like ß) for the same reason.

roussanoff 6y ago
I actually have the opposite take. The use of "X" instead of «X» in Russia started with the typewriters, not the computers. Apple added the correct quotation marks in iOS 11, and you could see how people very quickly switched to using them on social media. The software helped people rediscover the correct symbols and drop the typewriter-era bad habits, all it took was a small software upgrade.
- Leherenn 6y ago
  On iOS, " is automatically auto corrected to « for me. Are people switching voluntarily or because it is the new default?
  - roussanoff 6y ago
    If you are using the Russian keyboard, it's the new default (since iOS 11). Before that, you had to long-press the " to get it (along with ˝, „ and all these other marks. Interestingly, the computer keyboards are stuck with the old layouts. You can't buy a Russian keyboard with the right quotation marks. I am using a custom layout by Ilya Birman [1] that makes a nice remapping with «» available quickly. [1] https://ilyabirman.ru/projects/typography-layout/ https://ilyabirman.ru/projects/typography-layout/
ploika 6y ago
Irish lost the overdot diacritic in the move away from traditional Irish type around the 1940s, but it will never lose the acute accent (síne fada) because the meaning of a word is completely different if you drop it. Eg: Féar - grass. Fear - man. Cás - case. Cas - turn. Lóndubh - (nonsense) black lunch. Londubh - blackbird.

wlll 6y ago

I'm curious about the source here. I've always been taught (mid 40s, UK) to use "" not '', well before US English became readily accessible on the Internet.

rexpress 6y ago
I'm starting to doubt myself, but that was my understanding too. Furthermore "..." denotes a direct quote, whereas '...' can mean that the quote is indirect/paraphrased.

gnulinux 6y ago

Really interesting how Turkish and English are the only major languages that predominantly use "" as opposed to anything else (well, UK uses '' too though). I wonder how that cultural interaction happened or whether it's coincidental. Turkish alphabet is mostly based on German and French alphabets (with a certain dose of creativity) and Turkish language was heavily influenced by French in 19th century. So it's interesting that they don't use ,,'' or <<>>

augusto-moura 6y ago
Outside Europe I rarely see <<>>, in fact I never saw <<>> on the internet even on European sites, truth be told I rarely read any websites from Europe that are not in English so my opinion might be biased
- gnulinux 6y ago
  I've definitely seen ,,'' reading German literature (e.g. Kafka) and <<>> reading French literature. You're right about internet though, that is indeed interesting.
  - MayeulC 6y ago
    While this is the prevalent quotation mark used in France, " starts to catch on a bit. In my opinion, it is mainly due to the fact that « and » are not present on French keyboard layouts (and rather rare in general): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Keyboard_layouts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Keyboard_layout... Another issue is that you are supposed to type a non-braking space inside, which is a hassle, and often not present on keyboards either. Word processors usually take care of both these issues, replacing " with the appropriate (opening or closing) guillemet + space. Spaces are also used in Switzerland, but narrow (&nnbsp; instead of  ).
  - veddox 6y ago
    „“ is standard German usage and taught for handwriting. Angular quotation marks are a bit old-fashioned, and are usually found in (old) books.

kace91 6y ago

There's a lot of generational change due to the use of computers in writing, in general. For example, in Spanish, when I was a kid it was a given fact that exclamations and questions went between marks (¿? and ¡! respectively). Nowadays it's extremely rare to see opening marks - they exist in very formal contexts like books or newspapers, but even emails in the workplace got rid of them, and using them on social media or messaging apps would be just as weird as signing the message at the end.

cmehdy 6y ago
Similarly in French, some accents are casually going away and certain differences are also slowly eroding (for example in English you put no space between words and punctuation while in French you do[1], but a lot of French stuff online is written English-style nowadays). Internet in western countries really is creating some kind of English-centered shockwave. It's true (to a much lesser extent) in other languages. Japanese internet slang[2] is still very Japanese but has stuff directly borrowed or adapted from English for a lot of new tech. I'm getting into sci-fi territory now, but I think the Belta Creole[3] of "The Expanse" shows a cool futuristic take on a blend of languages where English still has the bulk of the real estate. [1] https://www.francaisfacile.com/exercices/exercice-francais-2/exercice-francais-115768.php https://www.francaisfacile.com/exercices/exercice-francais-2... [2] https://www.fluentu.com/blog/japanese/japanese-internet-slang/ https://www.fluentu.com/blog/japanese/japanese-internet-slan... [3] https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Belter_Creole https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Belter_Creole
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Does French not have problems with different words that if the accents are removed get written the same way, but have incompatible meanings? Portuguese is full of those, and it's a major source of resistance on changing the language in Brazil. (Although Brazilian resistance may look like plain acceptance from French standards.)
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Not so much. French tends to have words that are pronounced the same but are written differently thanks to all the silent letters and combinations that are pronounced the same: vers, verre, vert. mer, mère, maire. In writing you can usually do away with all the accents (many of them are grammatical or the strictly correct spelling but without changing the pronunciation and with little change of the 'look' of the word) without problems.

algesten 6y ago

I don't understand where they got this data from. Double quotation marks is very much the standard in UK press, why are they claiming single is preferred?

ableal 6y ago
I think single quotes are still prevalent in books.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

akfaew 6y ago

I'm from Poland and I've never once seen anyone use << >>

jwilk 6y ago
«» are not general-purpose quotation marks; they are used pretty much only in dictionaries and poems. We also use »« as second-level quotes. See: https://sjp.pwn.pl/zasady/98-Cudzyslow;629866.html https://sjp.pwn.pl/zasady/98-Cudzyslow;629866.html

niek_pas 6y ago

I am from the Netherlands. The use of low opening quotation marks („hello world") is extremely uncommon and generally considered archaic — so much so that I forgot they even existed until I read this article.

tgv 6y ago
I was just putting my books back on the shelves, and I've got two copies of De Kleine Johannes, one printed in 1919, and one printed in 1983. The first one has the „low quotation” marks, the last one single, ‘high quotation’ marks, but they are mirrored (the first one is a sort of upside-down comma).

abeppu 6y ago

I had not realized there were languages where angled quotations pointed inwards towards the quoted content. I wonder if there are legitimate cases (e.g. a French style guide discussing German punctuation?) of an outward-pointing angled quotation-mark language quoting an inward-pointing angled quotation-mark language or vice versa where it's ambiguous where a quote ends?