敒›眡ꇃ摮ꣃ썲溮⁧썛咖⁝

----- Original Message -----
From: "Flak Magnet" <flakmagnet@tabletop-battlezone.com>
> When you contract a word together, your use apostrophes for the parts
> you don't say (in "can't" the apostrophe replaces the "no" in "can
> not").  With alien words/names, it would seem that humans would
"spell"
> the parts that we CAN'T pronounce with an apostrophe.
>
> Perhaps that's the etymology of alien words containing apostrophes,
the
> apostrophes represent the "contraction" of alien words/sounds that
can't
> be pronounced by humans or even spelled by human letters or
characters.

No need to postulate extraterrestrial languages. Various HUMAN
languages,
when written in the Latin alphabet use different kinds of extra signs,
accents, cedilles etc. to denote sounds not usually available in the
alphabet, e.g.properly transliterated Chinese with its tones uses four
accents, German has its Umlauts marked by two dots over the vowels. The
most
unusual are probably the click sounds of the !Kung (Bushman) languages
marked by exclamation and other marks.

Using only apostrophes is just a lack of imagination .

;-)