I just noticed that upper and/or lower case letters D, I, L, and T with caron (hacek) are sometimes displayed with an apostrophe instead of a caron (and sometimes not). Is there any rhyme or reason to this?
In the Slovak orthography, the lowercase d, l and t are normally written with the 'apostrophe' form of the accent. Of the uppercase letters, only the L should normally be written with the 'apostrophe' form of the accent; the D and T should be written with the normal caron/hacek form. The C/c and Z/z are written with the caron/hacek form in both upper and lowercase. The reason for the distinction is, I believe, that the d, l and t with the aprostrophe mark indicate palatalisation (softening) of the unmarked consonant, whereas the c and z with caron indicate distinct consonants. In the uppercase letters, presumably because of the lack of convenient space for the apostrophe relative to the T and D, this form of the mark is only retained for L.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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