a character for an unknown character

[Marcel Schneider]

On Fri, 30 Dec 2016 22:17:12 +0000, Richard Wordingham wrote: 
> 
> On Fri, 30 Dec 2016 20:13:41 +0100 (CET)
> Marcel Schneider  wrote:
[…]
> > If the apostrophe and the
> > single comma quote are disunified, then U+02BC is used to spell the
> > word «fiʼ» (your first option). You might also wish to ask the
> > publisher, but Iʼm unsure whether he will appreciate to have to join
> > publicly one or the other spelling current.
> 
> You obviously haven't read the story's discussion of whether the fithp
> would honour a peace treaty!

I havenʼt read nor watched Star Trek (nor Star Wars).

> 
> I think the general understanding of the difference is very limited.
> For instance, the English wikipedia article about Klingon says, "The
> apostrophe, denoting the glottal stop, is considered a letter, not a
> punctuation mark", and then goes on to encode it as U+2019! 

Iʼm unable to find the quoted sentence in the cited article.

> The French wikipedia also uses U+2019.

In the "Klingon" article, mostly U+0027 is used, like to some extent in 
the whole French Wikipédia. U+2019 occurs indeed (rarely) in that article. 
French cannot use U+02BC as apostrophe, because it needs a punctuation, 
not a letter, for correct word boundaries. Fortunately, French can actually 
afford to use U+2019 as apostrophe, because it scarcely uses it as quotation 
mark. The single one are chevrons, and the comma-quotes are used as 
scare quotes (or abusively as nested quotes), thus almost always double. 
BTW, in German, U+2019 is no quotation mark at all, only apostrophe.

Marcel