よ as enders in interrogative sentences (as in どうなのよ)

Question

I was watching a Japanese drama earlier and one of the characters said どうなのよ〜最近しょうご (name) .

My question is よ normally used as sentence ender even for interrogative sentences? And what kind of nuance does it have?

note: the speaker is a woman, I've read somewhere that it has something to do with women's language?...

Answer 1

よ works to convey strong emotion here. よ + a question works here like the English equivalents of !?, ?! etc. These are together called the Interrobang (for more information please look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang)

Edit: I asked an expert and this is their explanation

'This if i remember correctly Is the explanatory particle. の here is making it more like they speaker wants an explanation or are explaining something. Same with ん except for んです　and んだ are a less formal. Here's an article on it since i had the same question not too long ago this helped me https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/explanatory-nda-ndesu-noda-nodesu/

And as far as i know that の without です or だ is just s more casual way of putting it but the の still applied the same way so it is like a のですor んです And i think ね acts to soften the tone'

You can check that article to clarify your doubt

Answer 2

In a strong tone, the one without よ sounds accusative and よ makes it bewildered. There’s no much difference in a casual tone, but if at all, the one without よ leans to sounding curios while the one with it suspicious.