ʻOkina

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ʻOkina letter forms
Hawaiian ʻokina The Tongan fakauʻa letter or Hawaiian ʻokina encoded as U+02BB (in Unicode[1]), derived from the Lucida Sans font.
Tahitian ʻeta The Tahitian ʻeta letter (or Wallisian fakamoga), currently not encoded correctly, derived from the Lucida Sans font.

The ʻokina, also called by several other names (see examples below), is a unicameral consonant letter used within the Latin script to mark the phonetic glottal stop, as it is used in many Polynesian languages.

Area Vernacular name Literal meaning Notes
Hawaiian ʻokina separator transitionally formalised
Tongan fakauʻa
(honorific for fakamonga)		 throat maker officially formalised
Wallisian (in ʻUvea) fakamoga throat maker no official or traditional status, may use ' or ‘ or ’
Tahitian ʻeta ʻetaʻeta = to harden no official or traditional status, may use ' or ‘ or ’
Cook Islands Maori ʻamata or ʻakairo ʻamata "Hamsah" or "Hamsah mark" no official or traditional status, may use ' or ‘ or ’ or nothing

Contents

[edit] Encoding and displaying the Polynesian glottal

[edit] Old conventions

In plain ASCII the glottal is sometimes represented by the apostrophe character ('), ASCII value 39 in decimal and 27 in hexadecimal, which in most fonts currently used renders as a straight, data-processing, typewriter apostrophe as is also specified in Unicode. But in some older fonts, especially those used on Unix-like platforms and related platforms and on an MS-DOS screen, it renders as a right single quotation mark (which is the wrong shape).

A hypercorrect (but actually incorrect) method for plain ASCII text is to use U+0060 grave accent (incorrectly termed "back-quote character" (`), which in some older fonts does display a glyph similar to a left single quotation mark. However, in most newer fonts, it has a pronounced lean to the left and can look inappropriate. A (partial) advantage is when a wordlist is alphabetically sorted, the "`" often comes after the "z", exactly where it should be in the Tongan language (admittedly not so in most other Polynesian languages, where it should be ignored). It is still useful as a fallback when words are to be entered into a database with limited character-set ability to have the character distinct from the apostrophe.

[edit] The new standard and transitional problems

According to Unicode, the codepoint for ʻokina is Unicode character U+02BB MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA ( ʻ ) which can be rendered in HTML by the entity ʻ (or in hexadecimal form ʻ).[1]

But lack of support for this character in older fonts (and many newer fonts) along with the large amount of legacy data and expense in time and money to convert has prevented easy and universal use of the new character. As of 2006 Apple Mac OS X based computers have no problem with the glyph, but Microsoft Windows especially when using Internet Explorer still has. U+02BB should be the value used in encoding new data when the expected use of the data permits.

This character is also a proper one for a Latin-letter transliteration of the Hebrew letter ʻáyin and the Arabic letter ʻayn. They are sometimes also rendered by a superscript half ring with the opening to the right ( ʿ ) or even, as a typographical fallback, a superscript c ( c ).

Unicode encodes a glottal stop at U+02C0 MODIFIER LETTER GLOTTAL STOP (ˀ), but this looks like an undotted question mark, which is inappropriate for ʻokina.

Its orientation and curve should not depend on the font style for apostrophes (so using a left apostrophe is wrong too, because it can be drawn either like a superscript non-curved mirrored comma, or a superscript 6-shaped apostrophe).

True Polynesian texts however draw the okina very differently, and this looks as none of the apostrophe, mirrored apostrophe, turned comma, or accent letter. The Polynesian ʻokina letter is more like 9-shaped left apostrophe, turned about 60 to 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

[edit] Tentative approximants

[edit] A display work-around

Because this character is not found in many fonts, it may not appear properly on all computer systems and in all configurations. Accordingly, where U+02BB should properly be used, the Unicode punctuation character U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK, ‘, represented by the HTML entity ‘, is sometimes used instead. It is nearly identical in appearance to U+02BB, but is treated as a punctuation mark rather than a letter by applications.

In practical terms, this only matters with regard to page breaks, hyphenation, and capitalisation; these usually cause few problems. This symbol is also used instead of the recommended turned comma letter symbol in transliterations from Semitic languages to assure proper display on the widest number of browsers.

The problem with this left single quotation mark character is that, depending on font style design, the single quotation mark may have two very different shapes, one of which is incompatible with the okina :

  • a superscript straight mirrored comma, drawn from bottom to top and normally thicker on the bottom right than on the top left. The thicker end on the bottom is incompatible.
  • the modifier letter turned comma, but it may still be wrong as it could be drawn in some font designs as an oblick strait line or a wedge without the needed curve, or the curve will be made so that its center will be on the left or top right, when the okina curve should be centered and opened on the bottom or bottom left.

[edit] A work-around problem

Nowadays many word-processors are equipped with 'smart quotes', which automatically change the straight apostrophe (') and the straight quotation mark (") into curly ones. If a quotation mark occurs after a space, it is assumed to be an open quote (the left quote), if elsewhere a close quote (the right quote). This policy also allows the apostrophe to be dealt with in the same way. Clearly this is not the behaviour one wants for the glottal. One would end up with text full with 'drunken' glottals, some pointing left, some pointing right. If a special Polynesian keyboard layout is not available, a workaround to the workaround is to insert a ‘dummy’ space before typing the quote (thus making it a left, open quote), then delete the space.

Also standard undo function of the word processors removes the bad autocorrections, for example using the undo icon on the toolbar or pressing CTRL-z in the most widely spread office suites, after the autocorrection happens.

[edit] Another problem

In some sans-serif fonts non-bolded and at normal size, the left single quotation character does not appear distinctly different from the straight apostrophe or from the right single quotation character. In Hawaiian, where only one of these curly quotation forms is used as a letter, this matters little. It is more problematic in displaying transliterations from Semitic languages where both left-quotation and right-quotation characters are used with different meanings.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Unicode Standard 5.1

[edit] External links

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters