11/13/2009 - Apostrophe

Today, in the same area my son and I found the feather symbols, I saw a curious apostrophe symbol. I have seen similar characters in many languages, but want to put it in the context of my previous post describing an analysis of these symbols (11/4/2009 - Symbol Analysis.)

From the paper, How the Past Affects the Future: The Story of the Apostrophe by Christina Cavella and Robin A. Kernodle:

"The term itself, used to refer to the punctuation mark /’/, has its roots in the Greek word apostrephein, which means ‘to turn away’ (American Heritage, 1992, s.v. apostrophe). The word was used in Greek to describe a rhetorical device in which a speaker turned away from the audience to address another person, either real or imaginary, and eventually the term came to express the concept of something missing, in this case, the absence of letters or sounds."

I thought I would take the Hebrew approach to adding this symbol into the mix. The apostrophe in Hebrew is referred to as geresh having two meanings from a wikipedia definition:

1. An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter (also known colloquially as a chupchik)
2. A note of cantillation in the reading of the Torah and other Biblical books, taking the form of a curved diagonal stroke placed above a letter

If the geresh is added to the letters previously analyzed, it slightly changes their pronunciation hence changing the letter it may represent. Although this is interesting, adding a geresh to any of the letters below would not change them in any way, or more accurately I think the geresh is not associated with these letters in Hebrew, but letters like Gimel, Shin, Vav, Kaph, Tav and Dalet.

The other possibility is that this symbol is actually a Yud in Hebrew. This represents the letter I or J. Adding J into the mix of letters from the post you get the following additional words for the letters BRABEHIYJ:

JAB
JAR
JAY (this may be of significance however!)

Interesting stuff.