What is a Greek question mark?

;

The Greek question mark looks just like a semi-colon and is placed at the end of a sentence – in the same manner as the English question mark – to show that a question is being asked.

Below are some examples. The top line of each question – in bold – is written in the Greek script. The second line – in italics – is the phonetic pronunciation. The third line is the English translation.

Πού είναι;
poy einai;
Where is he?

τι είναι αυτό;
ti einai afto;
What is this?

γιατί είσαι λυπημένη;
giati eisai lyphmenh;
Why are you sad?

Πώς θέλετε να πληρώσετε;
pws thelete na plhrwsete;
How do you want to pay?

To the English-reader’s eye, the semi colon looks strange hanging at the end of the sentence. To us, a semi-colon is always followed by more text. In Greek, the symbol at the end of the sentence shows that a question is being asked.

How do you make a Greek question mark?

In Unicode, the Greek question mark is separately encoded as U+037E but as it is basically a semi-colon, you can just use the semi-colon key on your keyboard. This is the case for both Mac and PC users.