Re: apostrophes in transliteration

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?

>2.  glottal stops
>3.  aspiration (it's used this way in McCune-Reischauer with respect to
>Korean)
>4.  contractions (like "can't" in English, though I suppose that's
>strictly speaking not a transliteration)
>5.  unfortunately, people in pulp sf/f who use names like Xe'tar'tika and
>insert apostrophes indiscriminately to make things like "exotic"
>
>Anyone know of any others?  :-p
English uses the apostropy in possessives: John's or boys'.

>YHL the whimsical


Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley