Comment by ryangs
I think proper nouns get a bit more of a pass in terms of purple prose.
I think proper nouns get a bit more of a pass in terms of purple prose.
Ooh this is fun trivia - originally dragons had a hard time with human names, so it became a tradition for dragon riders (particularly males) to adopt the dragon’s pronunciation as an honorific. So “Simon” becomes “S’mon.”
You say it with a bit of a slur - suhMON or fuhLAX - where the first syllable is not only unemphasized but uttered as quickly as possible then slurred into the next. F’lar really is just “fuhLAR”
The apostrophe here most likely represents a glottal stop (as in Hawai'i).
Unlikely, since no English speaker would be able to pronounce that cluster. The odds are overwhelming that it represents nothing at all, just like the apostrophe in "don't".
IIRC, dragonriders always elide part of their name, and indicate the gap with an apostrophe. It's consistent and explained in the text at some point.
I also enjoy the non-standard punctuation, e.g. F'lax -- how would you pronounce that?