Talk:Sefngji-huhø
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In MLT, the apostrophe is mainly used as a syllable separator -- required when removal makes finding syllable boundaries incorrect or impossible (starting from the right). They may be omitted when the syllables would still be discerned, or left in place for better readability. We have not found clear rules to govern this process for all cases.
In "unjoined" MLT, the apostrophe delimits adjacent syllables and implies the tone sandhi process will modify the left syllable.
See also: text segmentation
From the Explanation on Concise Atonal Spelling and TMSS Dictionary (2001-2003):
- (5) The separator ( ' ) is used to separate two letters from different syllables otherwise they might form a single syllable. For instance, the spelling [boafnafn] could be either [boaf'nafn] or [boafn'afn], the latter correspond to "good night" in English. Another example is [khoat'ham] which may be misread as [khoa'tham]. In many popular cases, however, no confusion may arise by omitting the separator. Examples are [Taioaan], [cidee], [kaoiok], etc. which can never be read as [Ta'io'aan], [ci'dee], [ka'oi'ok], etc. In ordinary MLT sentences, the separator may be inserted or omitted at author's convenience. Whenever the reader is accustomed with that word, and no other words of similar spelling can be recalled, the separator may be omitted for easy writing.