Last week, we looked at some of the more distinctive pronunciation characteristics of Lowspeak. Today, we'll look at an aspect of the written language; specifically, its punctuation.
In Lowspeak, it is common — though as always, not universal — for normal sentences, emphatic statements, and regular questions to have their punctuation at the beginning, as well as at the end of sentences. Some local habits and/or dialects eschew this practice, however, in favor of only placing the appropriate mark at the beginning.
.Iif, doh mat'fel bof'ma. (Maybe, but it's not a sure thing [Agreed, but one can't be certain].)
?Libir, am'dah, ya ah naow? (Are you [Can you be/Will you be/Are you able to be] free to talk about this important matter right now, yes or no?)
!Greeta, e jah fah, selerto (Hello, you weren't expected [I/we didn't expect you] so quickly [soon]!)
Lowspeak books, articles, or other works that are commercially or academically published usually follow the standard practice of the three root languages of Ingliss, Latin, and Ceicion, regarding quotation marks. Common or informal practice in this regard, however, often dispense with these, instead using forward and back-slashes for opening and closing quotation marks, respectively.
.Andra chahto \Moosh, seyan, ok'fal'paay/. (He said [says/will likely say], "The situation is untenable [unlikely to endure], so you should probably work quickly to achieve your goal/goals [prosper from the circumstances/make the best of a bad situation]."
When all of the peculiarities of Lowspeak are combined and in active use, it's easy to see why the language can be intimidating for newcomers to the border regions: it's sometimes challenging for native Lowspeakers from different sections of the border to understand each other! To outsiders, this all seems like a mess, and indeed, it probably is. To native speakers, however, Lowspeak is a robust, dynamic language, capable of tremendous subtlety and imagery. Its poetry in particular has garnered praise and respect among creative people across the length and breath of settled space.
By Ejoq's time, several generations of people have grown up with Lowspeak as their primary language. Academic researchers have proposed various dialects, however regional or ephemeral, to be the "official" forms of the language, but so far, nothing has been universally adopted. A single, monolithic Lowspeak language may well be unreachable in practice, but either way, it will certainly continue to be a complex, adaptive, and highly expressive way for hundreds of millions of people to communicate.