The apologetic apostrophe is a feature of 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. Scots or Lallans (Eng: Lowlands), sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from the Gaelic language of the Highlands, is a West Germanic language used in Scotland, parts of Northern Ireland, and border areas of the Republic of Ireland, where it is known in official circles as Ulster Scots or... The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ... An Anglophile is a non-English person who is fond of English culture and England in general, its antonym is Anglophobe. ... An apostrophe An apostrophe ( â€™ ) is a punctuation and sometimes diacritic mark in languages written in the Latin alphabet. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Barbarism is a language error where a non-standard or an incorrectly formed word or expression is used. ... In music, see elision (music). ...

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. Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ...

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. Wikisource has original text related to this article: Robert Burns Robert Burns, preeminent Scottish poet Burns redirects here. ...

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.

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:

References

Scots Language Dictionaries Ltd.