Conlang Orthography

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I have begun referring to random meaningless apostrophes in fantasy and sci-fi stories as "prepostrophes."

On another note, maybe the more conscientious spec fic conlangers may want to start representing glottal stops with hyphens instead. I know I connect the sound to hyphens far more readily. Howbout you?

Comments

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, I love that term.

Despite the fact that the only glottal stop in English AFAICT is spelled with a hyphen (in "uh-oh"), I'm not sure most people would make the connection. I think a lot would assume they mark compounding and ignore them. I've considered using them though.

There are other legitimate uses for apostrophes, though. Like explicit syllable breaks (renai vs. ren'ai), ejectives, or lack of aspiration.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

My accent makes intervocalic and some post-sonorant t's glottal stops--it feels really weird to pronounce the /t/ in "mountain" or "button" (although the ones in "bottle" and, well, "glottal" are alveolar flaps). That's what got me thinking about it--I was writing out that I pronounce it "moun-ain." "Moun'ain" looks like I'm saying it without a stop, since elsewhere in English an apostrophe means dropping sounds. (Note this is for English--in other natural languages I have no trouble parsing apostrophes as glottal stops. What gives me pause is that the apostrophes in so many fantasy stories are written by people who have no experience with languages that AREN'T English, so I wind up trying to apply the English part of my brain to it. For all I studied linguistics, my brain feels there are two languages: English and Foreign. Darn monolingual upbringing.)

[van.livejournal.com]

You example of "moun'ain" vs. "moun-ain" really gets the point across with regards to how my English brain parses the hypen as a glottal stop there and the apostrophe as a "dropped sound."

Maybe we should just buck it all and start using asterisks.