“Syriac (ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ leššānā Suryāyā) is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent” (Wikipedia)
Cambridge University researchers have discovered that the double dot known as zawga elaya in Syriac is probably the world's earliest question mark. It turns out that it was written near the start of a sentence to indicate a question as is done in Spanish withy ¿ and also with ¡ for exclamations. This is useful in Spanish as the word order does not always indicate a question, but also to indicate that part of a sentence is to be understood as a question or exclamation. It also happens in English that a question indicated by intonation, e.g. ‘You’re going away'?’ should have a question mark in print, in a narrative dialogue for example. But in English and other European languages a question mark is always used in unambiguous wh-questions: What is this? Who did you see?
