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alt title(s): Decorative Apostrophe "I'm guessing on how you say it. It's got an apostrophe. I think it's MmmFashnik. Like 'Mmm...cookies!'" — Dawn in Buffy The Vampire Slayer on how to pronounce the demon M'Fashnik's name.
One of the easiest ways to give an exotic or alien spin to names or coinages intended to originate from a previously unknown language is to sprinkle it liberally with unexpected punctuation marks.
Most often, this is done with apostrophes, perhaps because it appears in such a wide variety of purposes among various real languages — separating roots and affixes (e.g. English possessives); standing in for omitted or elided letters (e.g. English "can't" or French "coup d'etat"); marking palatalized (Russian), aspirated (Wade-Giles romanization of Chinese) or ejective (several languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest) consonants, or acting as the glottal stop consonant heard in the middle of "uh-oh" (Arabic and Hawaiian) — that one might figure something would have to fit in a pinch. Apostrophes (often originally accent marks) have also been used to denote honorifics or descriptives in proper names, such as the Gaelic O', Romance d' or Arabic Al'. Typically, these refer to lineage ("O'" originally meant "grandson of") or origin (the prefix literally meant "of" or "from"); and were more common historically. In recent times, the accents/apostrophes have been dropped entirely, or the prefix has been superceded by a fully attached variant (eg. the Gaelic M' being replaced by Mc or Mac).
(One of the more painfully common misuses of apostrophes is as interlexemic glue: where real languages would use hyphens — singer-songwriter, courts-martial, ex-parrot — or nothing at all — moonlight, housework, fireball — writers will often insert apostrophes between concatenated words and call it a day. This is not attested in any real language's orthography.)
This trope may not apply when diaeresis, umlauts, tildes, accent marks, and even tongue-clicks are a natural part of the language the story is written in; lingustics may even treat them as unique letters in their own right. Most commonly, though, no actual purpose for these marks ever crystallizes; they serve merely as a form of visual seasoning that may not ever be acknowledged in actual pronunciation.
After the apostrophe, the second most common punctuation mark is the diaeresis/umlaut (two different diacritics but both indicated by twö döts övër ä lëttër). In real life, the umlaut is used to indicate a difference in pronunciation (for example in German: fallen "to fall," fällen "to fell"), and a diaeresis is used to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately or a silent vowel is pronounced (for example naïve). Its use in fantasy was probably popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien, who used it a lot. But where Tolkien was a linguistics professor and mostly knew what he was doing, most subsequent writers seem to just toss umlauts/diaereses around for no reason.
See also Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut.
Ex'ämples:
Anime and Manga
- The Riofaldian language in Cannon God Exaxxion is like this, probably to disguise the fact that many Riofaldian characters & machines are inexplicably named after various Earth things. Scieżka (Polish for Path) becomes Shes'Ka, Anvil becomes An'Viru, Kaiser becomes Kas'Ar, & so on.
Comic Books
- In the DC universe, the names of Martian characters and locales: J'onn J'onzz, Ma'alefa'ak, K'ymm, H'ronmeer, L'Zoril', Zo'ok, Ma'aleca'andra.
- Wonder Woman used to have a supporting character named Nubia, who was the only Black Amazon. Her name has since been changed to Nu'bia, which is so much better.
- Parodied in The Sensational Spider-Man with an ancient beast known as the Che-k'n Kau.
- The real name of Judge Dredd's enemy, Judge Death, is apparently Sidney D'Eath.
Fan Fic
Literature
- The W'tch books are made of this trope, every name of a race or magic thingy is the standard English with an apostrophe replacing a vowel.
- They're called The Banned and the Bannished and they're by James Clemens.
... What? Stop looking at me. My taste in bad literature is my own business.
- Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen has names like: T'lan Imass, K'Chain Che'Malle, Onos T'oolan...
- May be justified in the case of the Imass by T'lan being a corruption / abbreviation of Tellann. As for the rest of them, though...
- In Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders Of Pern series of novels, dragon-riders' names are apostrophized, as an honorific, when they become bonded with a dragon. Since dragon-rider is usually a hereditary post, their parents give them names meant to be apostrophized easily — Fallarnon and Famanoran, for example, becoming F'lar and F'nor.
- In one instance, a boy named Jaxom is accidentally bonded to a dragon hatchling; he's exempted from the custom, partly because nobody can figure out where to put the apostrophe and leave something pronounceable.
- Also, the dragonrider L'tol changes his name back to Lytol when his dragon is killed.
- Random trivia: The intent of the tradition is to make the name easy to remember/pronounce when shouted.
- Strangely enough, female riders' names are left as they are. It could be that eliding the already-short female names would be redundant (Moreta, Leri, Mirrim, Lessa, etc), or simply because most females don't have such a constant need to be marked as "special."
- Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle uses apostrophes and umlauts: Ra'zac, Gil'ead, 3Uru'baen, Zar'roc, Alagaësia, amongst others. Usually randomly peppered throughout names with no rhyme or reason.
- I always figured in "Alagaësia" it was there because it needed to pronounced like "Alaga-ehsia" instead of "Alagaysia".
- Even though the pronounciation guide lists it as "Alagaysia"
- Diana Wynne Jones's The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, essentially a parodic list of fantasy clichés, explains that, since the typical Rules of Magic say you gain power over someone from knowing his or her True Name, replacing half your name with apostrophes is a wise precaution.
- She also mocks this trope pretty comprehensively in Dark Lord Of Derkholm (which itself parodies a lot of fantasy clichés).
- R. A. Salvatore regrets doing this so often in his early Forgotten Realms books. Now he tends to conveniently leave them out when he can. This isn't possible with the main character of the series, as this would make his last name "Dourden."
- In the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, every word in the Old Tongue has at least one apostrophe. A notable example is the Big Bad, Shai'tan (obviously Satan with an apostrophe).
- Shaitan is the Muslim/Arabic term for Satan (well it's one transliteration of شيطان; spellings like Shaytan are also valid).
- And the t used is not the one usually transliterated as t. Yes, Arabic has 2 t's, along with 2 s's, 2 d's, and 3 th's. This one, pronounced with the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, is usually transliterated with a dot under the t. Since most keyboards can't easily form that, people tend to replace the dot with a preceding apostrophe.
- Grand Admiral Thrawn from the Star Wars Expanded Universe had a full name of "Mitth'raw'nuruodo". Other Chiss have similarly long, punctuated names, and similarly they tend to shorten them, making it easier for humans.
- Timothy Zahn, Thrawn's creator, absolutely loves this, both in his Star Wars Expanded Universe books (Jorus C'baoth, Jorj Car'das, Borsk Fey'lya, Shada D'ukal, plenty of others) and his original works.
- Apostrophes are common in the names of Twi'lek characters in the expanded universe. Bib Fortuna, for instance, used to be Bibfort'una, Una being his clan name, later stripped from him. Wedge Antilles, upon arrival on their homeworld, finds himself called Wedgean'tilles, which meant "slayer of stars", because as Wedge'antilles his name meant something like "so foul a rancor would be sick".
- Mando'a uses it as an interlexemic glue, so you get
- dar (no longer) + jetii (Jedi) = dar'jetii (Sith)
- jetii + kad (sword) = jetii'kad (lightsaber)
- vorer (accept) + entye (debt) = vor'e (thank you)
- vod (sibling) + /ika (diminutive) = vod'ika (younger sibling)
- The Discworld novel The Colour of Magic features dragonriders with exclamation marks in the middle of their names, in a sequence parodying McCaffrey. Justified (eventually) when the narration finally tells us it represents the same sort of sound it does in African languages.
- In one of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien admits that, while the diacritical marks that litter some of his names are there for sound linguistic reasons and have standard meanings, in other cases he just scattered them at random to make the names look more "alien", specifically the circumflex (^) in languages such as Dwarvish. He used the letter K to similar effect, since in most of his languages it's redundant because C is always hard.
- That's not quite accurate — the circumflexes in Dwarvish and Orkish have a function, it's just that it's the same function fulfilled by acute accents in the less alien Elvish and Human words, namely indicating long vowels. To complicate matters, in Sindarin (one of the Elvish languages) circumflexes are used to indicate superlong vowels that are even longer than regular long ones.
- In the second Young Wizards book, Deep Wizardry, a number of the characters are whales and as such have names meant to mimic the cadences of whalesong. When Kit and Nita transform into whales, their names are given similar treatment, and are referred to as K!t and H'Neeeet.
- Averted in the case of David (& Leigh) Eddings' character, the Mallorean Emperor 'Zakath. 'Zakath spelled his name with an apostrophe for a specific reason prior to the slaying of Kal Torak by Belgarion. He wanted to style himself Kal (= god and king) Zakath, but thought it wise to apostrophise the "Kal" until Torak was safely and permanently out of the way. At the end of the series, following Character Development and the reduction of his ego, he deletes the "Kal" from his name and becomes simply Zakath.
- In the non-canon Star Trek novel series Star Trek New Frontier, The Captain's given name was M'k'n'zy of Calhoun. He changed it to Mackenzie Calhoun because no one at Starfleet Academy could pronounce it right. His family includes a Dn'dai and a Gr'zy as well.
- One character in Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater spells his name with an asterisk, in an overlap with The Unpronounceable.
"I am Pak Nfbnm*," the little man said.
"*?"
"Exactly."
- The Saga Of Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson makes use of apostrophes in the names of its principal alien race, the Ildirans. In this case, though, it is at least partly justified in that the parts of the name after the apostrophe denote the individual's rank in the species' caste system. It does make some of these names extremely difficult to pronounce, though (Zan'nh, Bron'n)...
- ... how is that a justification?
- Averted in Larry Niven's Ringworld, in which a city's name is normally written down as "Zignamuclickclick".
- Also averted in Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's Mote In God's Eye, where the alien assigned to study a particular human is designed Fyunch(click).
- Used heavily by Mercedes Lackey in her Heralds Of Valdemar books. Several peoples, including the Kaled'a'in (and the related Shin'a'in) have languages full of apostrophes as glottal stops.
- Jaqen H'gar in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
- All the Sithi in Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow And Thorn.
- In a tale truncated in The Film Of The Book of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, the Vl'hurg and G'gugvant races were provoked into ages of ruinous war by an off-hand remark drifting from light-years away, which ended in a peaceful joint enterprise into the tragic maw of a small dog. Because the sequence was cut down and inserted into the closing credits, the world may never know how these ancient civilizations were pronounced.
- The names were said in the radio series though, and were pronounced "Vla-hurg" and "Ga-gug-vant."
- Tamora Pierce, in her Circle Of Magic books, has the Fantasy Counterpart Culture, the Traders, who are the Tsaw'ha in their language.
- (Arguably justified since it's not gratuitous or mysterious — you need the apostrophe to separate the W and H into two distinct sounds instead of the "hw" sound you'd get in English. Also, it's the only time she does it.)
- Snow Crash has a character named Da5id. He probably picked the name himself trying to be cool and demonstrate that speech was obsolete. This Troper has never been sure what sound to insert there.
- The name is probably pronounced the same as "David", since in Roman numerals a V is equivalent to a 5.
- This troper has always pronounced it "Day Five'id"
- David Brin's Uplift universe includes alien species with names like "J'8lek", "Mrgh'4luargi", and "Le'4-2vo".
- The second printing of one Vernor Vinge short story begins with an author's note explaining that it was written immediately after taking a linguistics course, and that the @ and % symbols in the aliens' names correspond to phonemes humans can almost produce. Vinge apologizes for this.
- James Robertson Hangs A Lampshade on this in The Testament of Gideon Mack. One of the characters is complaining about the cod Scots dialect in an old book:
"Look at the language he puts in Ephie's mouth. All derived from some ghastly genteel concept of what the guid Scots tongue should look like on the printed page. Those apostrophes all over the place, as if someone's slammed the book shut on a plague of corn lice."
- In the Posleen War Series, the Posleen that get Character Development use apostrophes in their names. The language of the species is loaded with them, as well.
- In the Otherland series, one of the main characters is named !Xabbu. The ! represents a postalveolar click, which isn't uncommon in African language.
Live Action TV
- Why so many Jaffa in Stargate SG-1 have apostrophized names is a bit of a mystery: Would it really affect the pronunciation to transliterate their names as "Tealk" and "Braytak"?
- Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies is alleged to have used SG-1's "monopoly" on apostrophe names as a reason for vetoing one on his own show.
- Also, the evil aliens from SG-1 (whose name I will not attempt to spell as it has an aprostophe and I can never remember where) actually had the pronunciation of their name changed at random throughout the show, sometimes depending on who is talking, other times just because. A few common versions were "GOW-oold", "Go-A-oold" and for most of the human characters: "Goold"
- For the record, it's "Goa'uld," and for the most part, Goa'uld and Jaffa pronounce it "Go-A-oold," and one suspects O'Neill's pronunciation "Goold" is at least partly due to a lack of respect for them.
- It does seem intentional. Goa'uld, Jaffa, and sciency types who'd be inclined to get it right (such as Daniel and Carter) pronounce it "go-a-uld". Most aliens do as well. Others such as military (O'Neill and Hammond and Landry and most guest stars) will say "goold". This is very consistent, from the first use of the term all the way to their rare mentions in Stargate Atlantis nowadays.
- This is occasionally played for comedy as there are a few times when Daniel says "goould," though one was a reminder to Jack that he shouldn't trust the bad guys and (I think) at least one of them was to a goa'uld System Lord as a purposeful measure of disrespect.
- Which still doesn't make sense for how it's written. If it's intended to have two glottal stops, it should be spelled "Go'a'uld", which would (as in Hawaiian) indicate three separate vowel sounds. "Goa'uld" looks like it's meant to indicate that the OA is a diphthong and the U a second sound, thus "gwa-oold". But that isn't how it's actually pronounced.
- It's a glide, it's just not the glide you're expecting. Think of it as "Gowa'uld", and then suppose that the (highly imaginary) phonotactics and orthography of Goa'uld make that unnecessary because -oa- always sounds that way.
- Plain old regular humans from Earth get this treatment too — aliens call us the Tau'ri.
- The Taelons from Earth Final Conflict used apostrophes in every name for everything (Da'an, Ma'el, Zo'or). The show did some real-world Lampshade Hanging, by naming their official website's online shop "The Sto'or".
- In Farscape, Crichton writes up the name T'raltixx for the benefit of his shipmates, despite the fact that (a) no one else on the ship reads English, and (b) no one this side of the Galactic Core would write it like that. Of course, his mind was being affected at the time.
- However, that doesn't excuse the completely unnecessary apostrophes in "Ba'ku" and "Son'a" in Star Trek 9.
- Farscape also features, in a Season 1 episode, an alien named M'Lee (Emily), and Br'Nee (Bernie).
- Babylon 5 is not immune to this. Aside from the species named Pak'ma'ra and the Shadow home world of Z'ha'dum, especially the Narn seem to like apostrophes: G'Kar, G'Quan, Ta'Lon, Kha'Ri, et al.
- In the case of the Narns, the apostrophe seems to represent the joining of a compound word - for example, Na'Toth's father's name is Shak'Toth. Also, the Pak'ma'ra homeworld is called Pak'ma, which suggests a similar function.
- Word Of God states that Z'ha'dum is a Minbari compound word meaning something like "death of future."
- Several names in both Klingon and Vulcan in Star Trek: T'Pol, K'Ehleyr, etc. These are justified for Klingons, as the apostrophe actually represents a letter of their alphabet and is pronounced as a glottal stop.
- Explained (although not quite justified) for Vulcans in non-canon books: the "T'" prefix is used for "bonded" (marriage bond) females.
- Star Trek Enterprise and Star Trek Deep Space Nine introduced apostrophized names for male Vulcans as well, including V'Las and Chu'lak.
- Note that the latter name without the apostrophe would be Chulak, which is a planet in Stargate SG-1
- Not to mention M'Ress from the Animated Adaptation.
- B'Elanna from Voyager isn't pronounced with the stop, unless everyone's just saying it wrong.
- Parodied in Buffy The Vampire Slayer when the researching Scoobies identify the monster of the week as a M'Fashnik demon but are unsure of the correct pronunciation.
- While interviewing JJ Abrams about Star Trek, Stephen Colbert is visited by his Romulan counterpart, S't'e'fan Kh'lber't, who takes the time to clarify that he spells his name with a "kh" and five apostrophes.
- A Bit Of Fry And Laurie had a character named Derek Nippl-e. "Nippl-e" is pronounced as the sound of a battery being dropped onto a desktop from a height of a few inches.
Tabletop RPG
- Literary/roleplaying example: Drizzt Do'Urden (full name Drizzt Daermon N'a'shezbaernon) from the Dungeons And Dragons Forgotten Realms setting.
- Ever consider that Drizzt's name sounds like a bug hitting a bug-zapper?
- From the Dungeons And Dragons core setting, we have the Demon Prince Graz'zt.
- And in the Dark Sun setting, thri'kreen, an insectoid race, tend to have names like Myk'tyl'klk and the like, though this is justified in that they're sentient insects and their entire language sounds like that. Bugs have no need for puny vowels.
- I believe it's suggested or stated that the apostrophes are often clicks and other insectoid sounds that would be absurd to write in. Nezumi in Oriental Adventures also have apostrophed names, and the apostrophes mark chitters, chirps, and clicks.
- The Tau in Warhammer 40000 use apostrophe-compounds. The first word in every Tau name consists of their caste and their rank, separated by an apostrophe; for example, a Tau whose name begins with Shas'la is a low-ranking member of the Fire (warrior) caste, while a Tau whose name begins with Aun'vre is a mid-ranking member of the Ethereal (ruling) caste. Other Tau words containing apostrophes also seem to be compound words (e.g. mont'yr and mont'ka, both of which relate to the battlefield).
- In Tribe 8, you're not going to find many Z'bri names without apostrophes.
Video Games
- In Final Fantasy XI, everything related to the Zilart race has an apostrophe somewhere in there: Tu'Lia, The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, Al'Taieu, Archduke Kam'lanaut, etc. And let's not get started on places like Pso'Xja.
- Moreover, the world itself is "Vana'diel", pronounced with a noticable break.
- World of Warcraft does this a fair amount. One notable example is the phoenix god Al'ar, who uses a Punctuation Shaker to slightly disguise his Meaningful Name.
- Many of which were taken from the earlier Warcraft games, which tended to give them to evil characters such as Gul'dan, Ner'zhul, and Kel'thuzad.
- Blizzard seems to like this; Star Craft had the Xel'Naga.
- Battle For Wesnoth has quite a few.
- Bungie Software is infamous for this, with such examples as the W'rkncacnter in Pathways Into Darkness, S'pht'kr (from Lh'owon) in Marathon, and Y'gar 'Pewtrunoee (a Sangheili) in Halo.
- Don't forget Marathon Dr'Ate'R
- Parodied in the City of Heroes MMO, where the Positron Task Force includes a quest for "The Book of T'Jer'imikanu". Positron refers to it as "the Book of T'Gerima... T'Geruni... the magic book".
- Played straight with the Mu descendant NPCs that work for Arachnos, the ones that have names all have "Mu'-" as the prefix.
- Played straight some more with the Rikti, a lot of whom have apostrophes in their names.
- Dragon names in Bioware RPGs (Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights). Ohhhh yes. N'am'es w'ith apo'st'ro'p'hes ev'er'y sec'on'd le'tt'er.
- Gorgotha, Klauth, and Akulastraxis have apostrophes every other word?
- Ma'fel'no'sei'kedeh'naar aka "Guardian White Dragon" in Chapter 3, Vix'thra in Hordes of the Underdark, and in the sequel, "Nolaloth", turns out to be short for a much longer name full of apostrophes.
- Two of the four ancients in Eternal Darkness have 'em: Xel'lotath and Chattur'gha. Also, the city of Ehn'gha.
- Escape Velocity Nova had a malicious and delibrate abuse of this trope. The development team chose a brutally apostrophe laden name scheme for one of the major galactic powers. The result is a eye straining, migraine inducing experience when attempting to locate specific worlds.
- Longnames
 on the MMORPG Furcadia.
- Incubation's enemy monsters are the mutated Scay'Ger, with names like Ray'Ther, Ee'Ther, Dec'Ther, Squee'Coo, Tr'Yn, and Al'Coo.
Webcomics
- 8-Bit Theater parodies Dungeons And Dragons' love of apostrophes with its character Dark Elf Prince Drizz'l (a sendup of Drizzt Do'Urden) and the evil Doom Cultists, who have feminine names generously sprinkled with odd punctuation: Mrr'grt (Margret), L'zlhe (Leslie), Lv'rn (Laverne), etc.
- Don't forget the elven clans Khee'bler and Sahn'ta.
- Parodied in Sluggy Freelance, where the demon K'z'k The Vowelless is constantly annoyed when human characters pronounce its name "Kizke".
- Pronouncing it "K'Z'K" is actually quite possible. Instead of the English velar 'K' sound, try a uvular 'Q' sound as used in Arabic. Then pronounce a 'Z' in the front of the mouth. Then another 'Q'. This sounds very insect-like, and is the true name of a horrible demon!
- Parodied in Schlock Mercenary, when the footnotes explain the random apostrophes. This is a running gag with the Gatekeepers, whose phrases are always considered to be contractions of something decidedly longer and less cool-sounding. For instance, the name of their superweapon, the T'okjith, is a contraction of an 18-word phrase which translates to "The design is clever, but this <expletive> thing could sterilize a sizeable <expletive> chunk of the <expletive> galaxy if you're not <expletive> careful with it."
- Everybody's name's in Drowtales has at least two apostrophes, being inspired by the Dungeons And Dragons Drow. Just ask Mel'anarch Val'sarghress.]
- Not true. Her daughter only has one.
- Actually, the apostrophe after "Val" does serve a legitimate purpose: the actual house name is merely Sarghress, and Val is an honorific attached to indicate noble standing. But aside from that, though, it really does fit this trope to a T.
- Ah'Arl'Bah'l, the god of Apostrophes
Web Original
- One particularly egregious example comes from the web-original sci-fi setting Orion's Arm. OA has the To'ul'h, which speak the To'ul'ho'lo'ss language and follow the calendar known as `Ha'ts'ul. Their primary beast of burden is called the Shur'rooss'hur, and several famous politicians are To'ul'h, such as Ho'th'hss'lho, To'h'hshls'ho, Ho'h'h'l'l'h, H'to'hs'hssl'o, and H't'lo'h'ss'so'h. This is implied as being due to their alien language, which is unpronounceable to humans; likewise, humans cannot pronounce To'ul'ho'lo'ss. It is not explained what, exactly, the apostrophes are for.
Western Animation
Other
- The science museum COSI in Columbus, Ohio used to have an exhibit set on a fictitious Micronesian island ruled by the four "Spirits of Knowledge," named P'lunk, B'ra-Zoa, L'lala, and T'em-Poa. L'lala was the only one of the four whose apostrophe seemed to affect the pronunciation in any way.
Real Life
- Lojban.
- To be fair (and unlike most of the examples on this list), the apostrophe means something - it's pronounced like an H, and serves to separate two vowels that would otherwise be blended into a diphthong. So ui and u'i are actually different words by virtue of the apostrophe.
- Truth In Television: O'Neill, O'Malley, D'Angelo, etc.
- This is actually justified because they're contractions: the O' comes from the Irish Ó or Uí, both of which derive from Ua, meaning "descendent". So O'Neill was originally Uí Néill, descendent of Niall. D'Angelo is actually how "Of Angelo" would be properly written, because in French and Italian it's Not Allowed for a word that ends with a vowel to precede a word that begins with a vowel.
- Dara Ó Briain's name is not spelled O'Brien or O'Brian. It's also not pronounced like either of those. (He's talked about this before: it did use to be O'Brien, but his father changed it in a burst of enthusiasm for the Irish language movement, and now even other Irish people think it's confusing. Ed Byrne has personally made fun of it on Mock The Week.)
- Far less justified are the parents who think it's a good idea to curse their poor offspring with the "cat on the keyboard" approach to names, which tend to (ab)use this trope and get the unfortunate victims going to the nearest family solicitor when they turn 18 so they don't have to work at McDonald's for the rest of their lives.
- La'quesha is an African name! What do you mean "Where?" Just appreciate it's beauty!
- And people who go by the surname De'Ath. That's always bugged this troper. It's bad grammar in any language (to my knowledge), your name's Death, deal with it.
- Edward D'Eath would like a word with you.
- It's Norman French.
- It certainly is not Norman French, although it was meant to look that way. The name comes from English medieval pageant plays, where the roles ran in the family and eventually the family took the name of the part. The "Norman French" excuse is a bald-faced lie meant to cover up the name's real meaning.
- Some non-European languages transcripted in the Latin alphabet. F.e. Vietnamese ("tiếng Việt" - yes, the letters can have not one but two accents) and Arabic.
- Some romanizations of Japanese like Hepburn or Kunrei-shiki use n' when a syllabic n comes before a vowel, so we know that Ken'ichi is pronounced Ke-n-i-chi and not Ke-ni-chi.
- Kenny G?
- ¿Qué, Nietzsche?
- No, Ken Itchy.
- Closer to 'eechee', as opposed to 'neechee'.
- Chinese does this sometimes in the pinyin system, where Xi'an is transliterated with the apostrophe so as to avoid confusion in pronunciation. Apostrophes were a lot more common in the earlier Wade-Giles transliteration system - the sound represented by Q in pinyin is Ch' in Wade-Giles, for instance.
- As do most Semitic Languages. When transliterated literally, most Hebrew, Arabic words lack vowels. Ancient Egyptian, which is also a Semitic, literally sees words that, when translated, read M-N-N or L-M-Z. Vowels are filled in as needed given how we assume the consonants sounded.
- American businessman Timothy Dexter reputedly viewed the English language as a punctuation shaker. To this end, he wrote his autobiography, A Pickle for the Nowing Ones, with no punctuation whatsoever. When people complained, he wrote a second edition with an entire page of punctuation marks, asking the readers to "peper and solt it as they plese".
- George Bernard Shaw (I think?) used to write without apostrophes.
- When asked about the meaning and pronunciation of the dot in his last name, Mark Rein•Hagen once reportedly replied, "It's unpronounceable, and symbolizes how meaningless are the labels that we attach to ourselves."
- Suddenly everything about that game is completely clear.
- In early Esperanto, apostrophes were a mandatory root word separator. Now, hyphens are used, if anything separates roots at all. (Compare mal'san'ul'ej'o to malsanulejo.)
- Navajo uses the apostrophe for the glottal stop, and it uses it a lot—you need two just to say hello. (Yá'át'ééh.) It tends to sound a bit like Klingon, since Klingon's sound palate is based on Tlingit, which is distantly related to Navajo. K'elwod, for instance, is a perfectly normal Navajo boy's name—and it's probably also some functionary in the Gowron Administration.
- Many Breton surnames start with Ker- (Kerouac, Kermarrec), which was often replaced with a striked K (the lower right part of the K being striked out). With tipography came the inability to reproduce the striked K, which led to it being written K/ or K' (turning Kerouac into K'ouac or K/ouac). Still today, mainly in oversea territories, some French people have names such as K/Jean, K'madec, K/ily (and frequently run into trouble with bureaucracy).
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