N-apostrophe explained

N-apostrophe (’n, a letter (n) preceded by an apostrophe) is a digraph used in Afrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia.

Grammar

The letter is the indefinite article of Afrikaans, and is pronounced as a schwa. The symbol itself came about as a contraction of its Dutch equivalent Dutch; Flemish: [[wikt:een|een]] meaning "one" (just as English an comes from Anglo-Saxon ān, also meaning "one").

Dit is ’n boom.

pronounced as /af/

It is a tree.

In Afrikaans, ’n is never capitalised in standard texts. Instead, the first letter of the following word is capitalised.

’n Mens is hier.

A person is here.

An exception to this rule is in newspaper headlines, or sentences and phrases where all the letters are capitalised.

’N NASIONALE NOODTOESTAND

A NATIONAL EMERGENCY SITUATION

In computer systems

The Unicode standard recommends that a sequence of an apostrophe followed by n be used to encode this diagraph.[1]

It may be generated by combining with (n) or (N) to create or .

See also

Notes and References

  1. https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode15.0.0/ch07.pdf The Unicode Standard, chapter 7