English is such a difficult language. As English is my mother tong, I have the advantage of a lifetime of use to grasp it’s nuance and innuendo. People who make English their second language often run into the problem that the language is heavily based on context.
For example, our word for “love” encompasses an enormous swath of emotional contexts, most of which are overlapping and can be insulting or embarrassing if taken in the wrong context. Saying, “I ‘love’ this cookie” is completely different seam saying “I ‘love’ my child”, which is also a wildly different context than, “I ‘loved’ my wife last night”
Having many friends for whom learning English was an ongoing process, it was often interesting to have be a part of group discussions. Often a native english speaker would say something, and while all the individual words from that dialog where understood, the English learner would still be confused. Mix in sarcasm, irony, and hyperbole, and you have a phrase that can be instantly understood by an American, but is completely mystifying to the rest of the world.
I have discovered a moment that aims to help bridge this communication gap. In English, we are limited to only a few punctuation marks. Basically a sentence can be punctuated to have 3 general contexts, a question (?), an exclamation (!), and everything else (.). This ideal is to incorporate additional punctuation marks to expand the general sentence contexts.
For example:
The percontation point ( ⸮ ) or mirrored question make is used to set the context of a rectorial question.
The Temherte slaqî ( ¡ ) or inverted exclamation point is used to denote sarcasm and unreal phrases
More can be read at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
http://opensarcasm.org/
