[XeTeX] Hopi Glottal Stop (was Greek Hyphenation (monotoniko))

[Ken Beesley]

xetex-request at tug.org wrote:

>Message: 4
>Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 14:19:29 +0000
>From: Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org>
>  
>
<snip>

>  
>
>>    
>>
>>>* use U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE for the apostrophe  
>>>(elision), not ''
>>>      
>>>
>>Should U+02BC be used instead of U+2019 in Greek?
>>    
>>
>
>Probably, when it is functioning as an apostrophe/elision mark, which  
>is logically part of a word, as opposed to a punctuation mark  
>(closing quote).
>
>However, in practice I wouldn't be surprised if people use U+2019;  
>it's difficult to maintain such distinctions, when the characters  
>look the same. The fact that 2019 behaves as a punctuation mark,  
>while 02BC behaves as a letter, will be ignored by most people most  
>of the time!
>  
>
<snip>

I hope this isn't too off-topic.

Hopi orthography (from the 1997 Hopi Dictionary/Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni)
uses an apostrophe (or an apostrophe-like character) to represent the
glottal stop, which is a straightforward consonant phoneme
in the language. E.g. nu' ("I") and Pikya'ingwtsomo ("stone-axe hill").
Phonologically the glottal stop can appear at the beginning of
a word, always followed immediately by a vowel, but because a word cannot
begin (phonologically) with a vowel, by overt orthographical convention the
initial glottal stop is not represented in the orthography. E.g. instead of
writing 'a'a one writes simply a'a.

Is there a Unicode convention for encoding such an
apostrophe-representing-the-glottal-stop?

Thanks,

Ken