What are the apostrophes in the old tongue supposed to mean?  Are they guttural stops, pauses, omitted vowel sounds (if so, which ones), or something else?  Are they just added to make it look fantasy?  How do you pronounce them when reading? 

 

Personally, I just read the words as if the apostrophe weren't there and assume that they are sort of added for "flavor."  But I'm not sure that is the intention.  

 

Thoughts?

Whenever I encounter these I always immediately think of Greek diacritical marks that denote differences in aspirations.

apostrophes irritate me no end when I encounter them with no explanation. In Michael Moorcock's books they are a constant presence, thus we meet up with Saxif D’an, an interesting character, though hardly one you'd enjoy a meal with, who encounters Elric, prince of Ruins, on his way to R’lin K’Ren A’a, the origin city of the Melniboneans, now abandoned for ages since the Melniboneans sided with Chaos instead of Law and moved to Imryrr to force into being the Bright Empire which lasted ten thousand years.

 

I figure that if they come between two vowels, they should be treated as glo''al stops; if between two consonants, as indicating that both consonants are haspirated; between a consonant and vowel, as indicating the consonant is followed by a glo''al stop; if between a vowel and a consonant, as indicating that the vowel is heavily haspirated.

 

YMMV, those are my working rules. (Although, if the writer indicates they are clicks as in the Choi-san and some Bantu languages eg Xhosa, as Tad Williams does in the Memory Sorrow and Thorn four-book trilogy, I endeavour to click them as adequately as I can.)

5 hours ago, Kalessin said:

apostrophes irritate me no end when I encounter them with no explanation. In Michael Moorcock's books they are a constant presence, thus we meet up with Saxif D’an, an interesting character, though hardly one you'd enjoy a meal with, who encounters Elric, prince of Ruins, on his way to R’lin K’Ren A’a, the origin city of the Melniboneans, now abandoned for ages since the Melniboneans sided with Chaos instead of Law and moved to Imryrr to force into being the Bright Empire which lasted ten thousand years.

 

I figure that if they come between two vowels, they should be treated as glo''al stops; if between two consonants, as indicating that both consonants are haspirated; between a consonant and vowel, as indicating the consonant is followed by a glo''al stop; if between a vowel and a consonant, as indicating that the vowel is heavily haspirated.

 

YMMV, those are my working rules. (Although, if the writer indicates they are clicks as in the Choi-san and some Bantu languages eg Xhosa, as Tad Williams does in the Memory Sorrow and Thorn four-book trilogy, I endeavour to click them as adequately as I can.)

I can see you have put some thought into it.  And thanks for properly using the term glottal stop instead of guttural stop as I did.  I knew it didn't sound quite right when I wrote it, but didn't endeavor to investigate why.  

They make it very difficult to search books and other materials because quotation marks are metacharacters in many applications.