From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Mar 25 2005 - 14:53:34 CST
> ...
>
> It is still true that the apostrophe has variable frequency across
> languages and in English it is not very frequent and therefore its
> suppression for « security » reasons is relatively unimportant. Here
> is the frequency of apostrophe in a comparable text (the Gospel of John) :
>
> German 0
> Spanish 0
> English 172
> French 1020
> Haitian Creole 1367
> Italian 21
> Danish 13
> Latin 0
>
> (Source : Jacques André, Unicode et la ponctuation, ATALA, Paris, 22
> novembre 2003).
You don't say which English version this figure relates to. If it is to
the King James, we must realise that punctuation conventions have
changed since 1611, and these changes have been only partially reflected
in later printings. Here are some data for the gospel of John in modern
English versions which I had available (counts may include headings,
footnotes etc):
English (CEV) 307
English (New Living Translation) 279
English (Good News Translation = TEV) 122
English (Revised English Bible) 108
English (NIV) 102
English (New Jerusalem Bible) 55
English (NRSV) 49
English (RSV) 32
The interesting thing here is the nearly ten-fold variation, which
closely matches the spectrum of Bible translation styles, with the more
formal and literal translations using few apostrophes and the more
"dynamic" translations using many more. I would think that the more
formal versions tend to avoid even the possessive suffix as somehow
informal, whereas the two versions which have the largest number of
apostrophes probably make considerable use of contractions. This
illustrates how far the frequency of apostrophe in English depends on
the register of language - and perhaps that deprecation of apostrophe is
associated with a formalised idea of standard English. So please let's
not export that deprecation to IDNs, which are intended to support
languages in which the apostrophe is by no means deprecated.
And here are some more data for some other languages - the interesting
thing is the very different purposes for which the apostrophe is used in
different languages:
Russian Synodal 0
Azerbaijani (marks hamza and ayin in loan words from Arabic) 72
Greek New Testament (marks compulsory contractions) 148
Modern Turkish (used between root of proper noun and suffix) 798
French Common Language (marks compulsory contractions) 1227
I also note a wide range of which Unicode characters are used for the
apostrophe in the various languages, but that is an issue for those who
coded the texts (for some of them, it is me).
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.8.1 - Release Date: 23/03/2005
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