Apologetic apostrophe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The apologetic or parochial apostrophe is a feature of Lowland Scots orthography, now widely proscribed as Anglocentric, whereby an apostrophe is inserted or appended to Scots words to create the appearance of an English contraction, thus fostering the impression – common among speakers of English and Scots alike – that Scots is simply a barbarized, heavily elided form of English.

In most cases, Scots words never actually "lost" letters. For example, while the word taen would often be spelled ta'en (to resemble the English "taken"), the word in fact never contained a velar consonant. In the 14th century, according to an older Scots orthography, it was spelled tane.

Robert Burns, though himself a speaker and promoter of Scots, made heavy use of the apologetic apostrophe in his writings. Though the feature is increasingly absent from Scots literature, it remains common in informal writing, and in transcription of Scots by English-speakers.

Scots	Apologetic apostrophe	English
gien	gi'en	given
mak	mak'	make
o	o'	of
fitbaw	fitba'	football
spellin	spellin'	spelling
awfu	awfu'	awful

1 Legitimate use of the apostrophe in Scots
2 Apologetic apostrophe in Scottish Gaelic
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Legitimate use of the apostrophe in Scots

It should be noted that many words in Scots have both a full form and an abbreviated form. In abbreviated words, an apostrophe is generally used in place of the elided letters.

abbreviated	full
e'en	even
e'er	iver
eneu'	eneuch
lea'	leave
ne'er	nivver
ne'er's day	new year's day
nor'land	northland

In the construction of the past-tense or past participle, Scots often appends the apostrophe to verbs ending with "ee" to prevent three "e"s from occurring in a single word:

dee > dee'd, gree > gree'd etc.

And, as in English, Scots uses the apostrophe to indicate contractions of multiple words:

Scots	English
A'm	I'm
wi't	with it
ye're	you're
o't	of it

[edit] Apologetic apostrophe in Scottish Gaelic

Many people may not be aware of the parallel phenomenon in Scottish Gaelic. Just as some people assumed Lowland Scots to be bastardised English, others assumed Scots Gaelic to be bastardised Irish. As with Lowland Scots, in some cases, there is a genuine loss of letters, but in other cases, it is unnecessary. Scottish Gaelic has eradicated many apostrophes, so while "tha ann", becomes "th'ann", "'S e" (Is e) is invariably written "Se" and "'nam" ("ann mo") and "'gam" ("aig mo") are invariably written "nam" and "gam", "Ciad e?" is now often "Dè?".