When When a Letter Is Dropped for an Apostrophe, Such as When “Saying” Becomes “Sayin’”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Gina from Thorntown, Indiana.

How are you today?

Hi, Gina. Welcome to the program.

Hi. Well, my husband came down with a question for me because I majored in English in school and he thought I should know this.

And it has more to do with a technical term than how to employ it.

And he said, what’s it called when you use an apostrophe in place of a G at the end of a word?

So say if you’re writing something and you say, I was saying this, and you use S-A-Y-I-N apostrophe.

And I said, well, it’s abbreviation.

He said, no, because apostrophes are used for possession or contractions.

And I looked it up in my books, and he was right, and we couldn’t find anything else.

And so I said, I’ll ask you guys.

Well, I think we can get to the bottom of this one pretty quickly, actually.

Okay, great.

You were right.

Well, I’m going to tell you that.

Here’s the thing.

What’s happening there is really an abbreviation.

It is literally abbreviating the word by dropping a letter off.

And then the apostrophe is just a courtesy to show people that something is missing.

Something was taken away.

We do that throughout English.

You’ll see it in poetry.

You’ll see it in written speech.

A lot of times you’ll see it when people are trying to write in dialect form.

They’re like trying to represent the way people speak nonstandard English.

They’ll just drop all kinds of stuff and put apostrophes there to show that something’s missing.

That apostrophe shows that it’s an abbreviation.

The shortened form of a word is an abbreviation.

It’s just an abbreviation.

It’s just an abbreviation.

There’s no other technical word for it.

Well, there are some other things.

You might call it a shortening.

I know that doesn’t sound very technical, but it is what they say in dialect studies.

It’s just a shortening of a word.

When you take an ing word, the gerund form of a verb, and you drop the g, it’s called g-dropping.

I mean, it doesn’t get very technical and doesn’t need to, but that’s what they actually, if you read the academic journals, they just call it G-dropping.

But I’m just saying, you know, the saying is just an abbreviation of saying.

That the English major was right.

Yeah.

Yay!

I did learn something.

Yay, you did.

All that money was worth it.

Yeah.

I can appreciate the confusion, though, because that apostrophe is carrying a heavy load.

That apostrophe is doing all kinds of stuff in the language.

Right, Martha?

Yeah.

I’ve also seen the term apologetic apostrophe.

Have you seen that?

I love that.

That’s where like when you say, or the blue hills, and you put the apostrophe in there just to show that, well, we never pronounce the V in this word in our particular dialect, but I’m going to throw it in there for the people who do.

Yeah.

Sorry, we don’t have the G here, but yeah, top of the morning, that kind of thing.

Top of the morning to you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you could call it an apologetic apostrophe, I suppose.

Very good.

Singing in the rain.

I like that term.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think somebody’s going to have to be apologetic around there.

They might.

So is your husband there? Can you just yell to him that you’re correct?

Yes, he is, but he has an office here, and me yelling into his office is probably not a good idea.

So just slip the note under the door that says, two weeks of dishes?

Yeah.

Something of that nature at any rate.

Sounds good. Congratulations.

Thanks.

Okay, well, thanks again, and it’s wonderful talking with you.

We all listen to you.

Thanks for your excited voice.

Okay, sure.

Have a good day.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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