Punctuation
There are over 13 punctuation marks that are used in a language or communications.
They are;
Period, question mark, exclamation mark, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, brackets, braces, parentheses, apostrophe and ellipsis.
a) Question mark (?)
It placed at the end of a sentence which is a direct question.
It is used with the interrogatives such as;-
who, why, when, what, how, which etc.
They are used to end the question.
| English | Lango |
|---|---|
| What is your name? | Nyingi obedo nga? |
| How old are you? | Mwaka ni tye adi? |
| Where do you come from? | Yin i yaa kwene? |
| When did you arrive? | Yin i tunu a wene? |
b) Exclamation mark (!)
It is used for commanding statements.
| English | Lango |
|---|---|
| What happened! | Ngo otimere! |
| Why don't you come! | Pingo pe i bin! |
| Who was that! | Mano nwongo nga! |
| Bring it here! | Kel kan! |
c) Quotation mark ('', “”)
They are either double or single quotes.
They are for quoting statements from another person or reporting something from someone.
| English | Lango |
|---|---|
| He said, “I will come tomorrow” | En okobo, “an abino diki” |
| I said, “what is wrong?” | An akobo, “ngo a rac?” |
| According to Obol, 'It was a sad story…" | Alubere kede Obol, “nwongo obedo icina a lik …” |
| ‘It was raining yesterday’, Odul said. | ‘Kot nwongo tye acwee aworo’, Odul okobo. |
d) Comma (,)
It is used to mark a breathing point in a sentence.
Some sentences are too long to read the whole thing,so we put comma to say you can breath here.
It is also used to break things.
| English | Lango |
|---|---|
| One, two, three, and four. | Acel, aryo, adek, kede angwen. |
| This sentence is too long, we give a breathing place here. | Coc ni bor atek, wan omio ka weo kan. |
| I am Lokang, you are Okello, and we are luo writers. | An abedo Lokang, yin i bedo Okello, kede wan ducu obedo ocoo Luo. |
e) Semi-colon (;)
It is used to end long sentence which have comma in it.
| English | Lango |
|---|---|
| In the morning I eat breakfast, take tea, and wash my face; in the afternoon i cook food and sleep. | Idiko an acamo CEM me idiko,mato cai, kede lwoko wanga; i dyeceng an atedo dek kede nino. |
| We arrived late,our bus broke down; then they made it run again. | Wan orii I tuno, bac wa obale; eka ote yubo mio ngwec doki. |