Orthography Convention(s)

Apostrophe Usage: The apostrophe marks phonological contraction showing where sounds have been dropped during natural speech compression. Examples include:

• al'up = ala + up (where apostrophe indicates elision)

• tun'go = tungz + go (fusion of two distinct words into a single lexical unit)

SS Special Case: The digraph SS always produces a soft Z sound regardless of position within the word:

• sseck = "zeck"

• vassa = "vah-zah"

• messasha = "meh-za-sha"

This consistent pronunciation rule eliminates positional variation in the realization of this consonant combination.