History Main / PunctuationShaker

* Played straight with the Kzinti language in the Literature/KnownSpace 'verse, and probably parodied in that one script is composed entirely of commas, apostrophes, colons and semicolons.

** Also, the Quarians use apostrophes to run their given and clan names together: Tali'Zorah nar Rayya is explained to be Tali of Clan Zorah, born of the Starship Rayya. 'vas' is also used in their naming system to indicate the ship which they are the crew of, as such, at the beginning of [=ME2=], Tali's full name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya vas Neema

* Played with in ''{{Asterix}}'', where the Vikings' language is represented by French (English in the English translation) with a "Scandinavized" orthography - "a" becomes "a" with a little circle on top, "o" an "o" with a diagonal line through it. Asterix tries to communicate with them by peppering his dialogue with the Scandinavian diacritical signs, but they can't understand him because he puts them on the wrong letters.

*** Note that the latter name without the apostrophe would be Chulak, which is a planet in [[StargateSG1 Stargate SG-1]]

* 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"?

* Averted in LarryNiven'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)''.
* Played straight with the Kzinti language in the KnownSpace 'verse, and probably parodied in that one script is composed entirely of commas, apostrophes, colons and semicolons.

** ...which is actually quite easy assuming you speak Kanien'kéha aka Mohawk. :D (This is a case of the VGM trope mixing with a Real Life trope; transcription methods tend to turn into PunctuationShaker examples for a 'lot' of First Nations languages.)
** And the pronunciation is roughly "Rah-tawwn-hah-KAAAAYY-taww" with the "eh" bit held out longer than the other vowels (and the stress on that syllable), the "nh" bits said like an extra-nasally N, and the "aww" bits essentially said through one's nose. (I told you First Nations languages transcription systems are a bit weird! :D)

** And the pronunciation is roughly "Raton-nakey-ton" with the "eh" bit held out long (and the stress on that syllable) and and the "nh" bits said like an extra-nasally N.

* As noted above (in the VGM example for ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'') a 'lot' of Roman transcription systems for First Nations languages tend to descend into this (largely because a lot of First Nations languages plain don't have sounds or distinctions in sounds that lend well to Roman letters). Mohawk is among the 'less' problematic languages (with JUST having diacritics for nasal vowels, retroflex consonants, glottal stops and vowel length and tone); Nuxalk and other Salishan languages can turn this UpToEleven (then again, these languages also have some of the higher numbers of consonants documented in a language).

* From ''ChainmailBikini'':

* In the English version of ''DragonQuestIX'', one of the bosses is called "Master of Nu'un". This has no in-game explanation, since there is no such thing as "Nu'un" in the game's plot. He's merely a counterpart to [[PunnyName Jack of Alltrades]].

* In the ''{{Otherland}}'' series, one of the main characters is named !Xabbu. The ! represents a postalveolar click, [[ShownTheirWork which isn't uncommon in African languages]].

** They're not dragons, but an alien race, the quarians, in MassEffect have names like this--Tali'Zorah, Kal'Reegar, and such. They seem to signify what a space is to human names though, the name after the apostrophe being their family/clan name.

* In ''MassEffect'', the [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe asari]] occasionally have a shaker--most notably Liara T'Soni, Sha'ira and Aria T'Loak. It is more prevalent among the batarians. At least one turian--Lorik Qui'in--has it too.

After the apostrophe, the second most common punctuation mark is the diaeresis/umlaut (two different diacritics but both indicated by ẗwö döẗs övër ä lëẗẗër). 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 normally silent vowel is pronounced (for example ''naïve''). Its use in fantasy was probably popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien (like MANY fantasy devices), who used it a lot. (He used acute and circumflex accents even more). However, Tolkien was a linguistics professor and these came from actual grammatical and orthographic rules within his over half a dozen complete invented languages and so served a real purpose. Often cropping up when foreign words were translated from their original script in Westron.

After the apostrophe, the second most common punctuation mark is the diaeresis/umlaut (two different diacritics but both indicated by ẗwö döẗs övër ä lëẗẗër). 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 (like MANY fantasy devices), who used it a lot. (He used acute and circumflex accents even more). However, Tolkien was a linguistics professor and these came from actual grammatical and orthographic rules within his over half a dozen complete invented languages and so served a real purpose. Often cropping up when foreign words were translated from their original script in Westron.

** She also mocks this trope pretty comprehensively in ''DarkLordOfDerkholm'' (which itself parodies a lot of fantasy clichés).

After the apostrophe, the second most common punctuation mark is the diaeresis/umlaut (two different diacritics but both indicated by ẗwö döẗs övër ä lëẗẗër). 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 (like MANY fantasy devices), who used it a lot. (He used circumflexs, macrons, and acute and grave accents even more). However, Tolkien was a linguistics professor and these came from actual grammatical and orthographic rules within his over half a dozen complete invented languages and so served a real purpose. Often cropping up when foreign words were translated from their original script in Westron.

* The BigFinishDoctorWho stories feature a villain named "[[SpellMyNameWithAThe the]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Kro'ka]]", in whose name the apostrophe seems to represent a subtle glottal stop. There's also an alien companion [[MyNaymeIs whose nayme is]] C'rizz. It's pronounced like "Carys", a legitimate Welsh name it's sometimes (understandably) misspelled as. He's also got a [[spoiler:deceased]] girlfriend named L'da, in whose name the apostrophe represents the bit where there's sort of a pause or maybe a schwa to make up for the effects of her species' tragic vowel deficiency.[[note]]One imagines her and C'rizz huddled together of an evening, sheltering in the combined warmth of the two vowels they have between the pair of them and struggling to pronounce each other's names...[[/note]]

* Parodied in ''[[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/54117/Whom-the-Princesses-Would-Destroy%E2%80%A6 Whom the Princesses Would Destroy...]]'' with "Ykzlpxlt!k, The Disemvoweled One."

*** Averted in AlanDeanFoster's {{Novelization}}, which spells it "[[FunetikAksent Vejur]]".