Re: apostrophes in transliteration

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> >I'm starting a list of things I've seen apostrophes used for in
> >transliteration systems, natlang, conlang or otherwiselang:
> >
> >1.  morpheme boundaries, especially (it seems?) in agglutinating-type
> >languages
>
> This is one I'm not familiar with. Can you give examples?
Maybe this is just something that Random SF/F Writers like to do and not
something that occurs in "real life" transliteration.  I suppose things like:

yunha-hantae          ch'aek-eul         jusaeyo
Yoon Ha-to (postpos.) book-object marker please-give

where, if McCune-Reischauer didn't already use the apostrophe to indicate
an aspirated consonant, the dashes in the transliteration could be
apostrophes.

Or, for a stupider made-up example,

aka'mali'tali'bas
he ship onto going

(meaning passenger or sailor, perhaps).

Thanks to everyone for the splendid list of examples!  Perhaps I should
put it up on my website somewhere as Reasons to Be Cautious When Using
Apostrophes in Your Conlangs Because They Have 101 Uses Already.

YHL