In Spanish questions are phrased the same way as affirmations, when you are speaking the only difference is the intonation. Without a mark to say you are starting to read a question it’s possible that the meaning changes in the end which would be annoying. (Source: Portuguese is the same but has no inverted question mark, and sometimes it’s mighty annoying, especially with long questions)
Funny enough English does this all the time:
- That’s food.
- That’s food!
- That’s food?
- That’s food?!
- That’s food…
All have different intonations and punctuation but are otherwise the same. Internet lingo does compensate for this somewhat but at least in “proper” form the above holds true for all kinds of situations
English can do that too, but it’s not really a “proper” way of doing it. The proper way would be to say “is that food?”
There are languages where the only way to pose a question is to change the intonation.
