Does that mean Michael O'Hare, Beverly D'Angelo, and Madeleine L'Engle are aliens? And that's not even counting all the Arabic, Asian, and African names that use apostrophes or other unusual punctuation when transliterated into the Roman alphabet. Given that alien names would be based on even more exotic phonetics, it makes perfect sense that they'd require apostrophes and the like when transliterated.
Not really. T'Pol could have been rendered Tipoll. They don't require them, but they may prefer them. Alternately letters could be transliterated in ways where they mean different things than what we use in English pronouncination (hence the pinyin Qing is pronounced chin); but that's rarely if ever been an approach I've seen sci-fi use.
No, because the letter I represents an actual vowel sound that is not part of the name. What about Dr. M'Benga? That's an actual Congolese name, and that's how it's actually spelled. It's not spelled "Mibenga," because that wouldn't be correct. It would be interpolating a vowel sound that doesn't belong there, and it might be misrepresenting something about the structure of the language, the meaning of the prefix. And what about languages where the apostrophe represents a distinct consonantal sound, the glottal stop, as it does in Arabic (and in Klingonese, which borrows heavily from Arabic phonetics)? The spelling "Qur'an" doesn't include the apostrophe gratuitously; there is actually meant to be a glottal stop after the R. Westernizing it as "Koran" is inaccurate because it misrepresents the way the word is actually pronounced. The apostrophe belongs there. It serves a purpose. There's nothing wrong with using apostrophes in real names. It happens all the time, in many languages, and there are good and valid reasons for it. It shouldn't need to be justified, any more than the use of, oh, capital letters at the start of proper names should have to be justified. I mean, why spell a name "Spock" or "Dax" when you could just save yourself the trouble of using the shift key and spelling it "spock" or "dax"? We do it because the capital letters are an accepted convention of the language conveying a specific meaning. They serve a function. And so do apostrophes. It's really very, very bizarre to talk as though there's something bad about it.
It's always like that. *shrug* Anyway, I'm reminded of the Making of Star Trek book by ... um Whitfield and Roddenberry, maybe? There is a full page of potential Vulcan names. They had decided that the rules for all Vulcan names were 1) they were all 5 letters lock, 2) they all started with S, and ended with K, and 3) most of them had p as the second letter ... SPxxK. And they went through various combinations including Spook and Spunk. At times, it was a fascinating read. At other times, it was a "pat me on the back and look at how wonderful I am!" kind of book.
A difference that is no difference, though. T'Pol is pronounced Tipoll, therefore the ' is not required. It is, however, preferred. My surname is McKenna. Which is hardly helpful to a phonetic reading, as an 'a' sound is presumed - it's pronounced Makenna. That's just the way words are, especially when emerging from different languages and contexts, as mine is essentially an Anglicized form of a Gaelic name which once upon a time had vowels in areas that made sense. It probably stems from it being a lazy shorthand for exotic, which it frequently is.
No, it absolutely is not pronounced "Tipoll." There's no "I" sound there. The problem is that in American English, we slur so many of our vowels down to the point of near-nonexistence that we tend to treat certain vowels as interchangeable with one another, with the schwa, or with a phonetically valueless exhalation between consonants. But that's not phonetically or linguistically accurate, and it's a confusion specific to American dialects. It's ethnocentric to insist that the phonetic usages and preconceptions of Americans should define how every name in every language is transliterated. Names should be rendered according to the rules of their own languages whenever possible. Again, that's not an A sound. It's a schwa. But we Americans tend to pronounce lots of vowels as schwas, so we tend to think of them as interchangeable. But that is not technically correct. But plenty of "exotic" names in real life, as well as much less exotic names like O'Brien or O'Malley, use apostrophes. Exotic languages can be expected to require exotic pronunciations or spellings, so it's logical that they would require diacritical marks. So is it a shorthand? Yes, since it's a clear indication that the language in question is exotic. But it's a valid shorthand. Don't dismiss the value of shorthand as a storytelling tool. The ability to get information across concisely and implicitly, without needing an overt infodump, is a very valuable thing for a storyteller.
That's nice. But I don't speak American English. I have this little location detail written right beneath my avatar, so I figured that would be clear. To my Hiberno-English speaking mind, they said Tipoll. I don't know if in American English that comes out as Tapoll or Tupoll, but substitute where appropriate. It's certainly possible to spell out the name without recourse to a '. No, actually, it's an a. I'm really not going to be condescended to by an American about my own name, of all things. As indicated, the name is an Anglicization of the Gaelic. The Gaelic is Mac Cionnaith. Which is pronounced mak kyun-ee, more or less (gaelic pronunciation is more exotic and difficult then anything you'll encounter on sci-fi TV, I do assure you). You'll notice that what was 'Mac' in the Gaelic has become 'Mc' in the English. The a has just been scrubbed out. Why? I have no idea. Which incidentally are the English forms of those names. Their Irish Gaelic equivalents don't have apostrophes. Nine times out of ten we have a word spelt and pronounced in a manner it's extremely easy for an American viewer to get, with a random apostrophe thrown in or a rather odd lettering choice to make it seem exotic. So I think the criticism is pretty sound.
being English, i'd like to point out the Vulcan chick's name sounds like Tuh-pol to me like it's Muh-ress
I was amused when I saw the DS9 episode "Necessary Evil" in which the spelling of a Bajoran name is a somewhat important plot point. It's the only time a Bajoran name has ever had an apostrophe. Now that's just silly.
A clear and precise transliteration of the sounds of one language into the writing system of another is linguistically desirable, but not always practical. The international phonetic alphabet that Wikipedia uses to indicate pronunciation, for example, is incomprehensible to most people who aren't professional linguists, no matter what their native language is. There's also the matter of context. It sounds utterly ridiculous and self-consciously P.C. when a newscaster speaking plain American English suddenly comes to a Spanish name and gives it the correct Spanish pronunciation with rolled R's and non-gliding vowels. As for T'Pol, I always figured the correct way to pronounce her name is to say get political, then drop the ge and the itical.
Basically there's an unwillingness to spell alien names in a way that isn't instantly understandable as phonetic to how English is pronounced (as opposed to any other language with the Latin alphabet). This also means that things that rarely appear in English, like accents, are frequently absent. At the same time, there's an understanding that these are alien names and need to seem exotic. So unusual letters are used, and, of course, sometimes an apostrophe where you may not expect to find one. To use Christopher's example, if the Qur'an was a text invented on sci-fi TV show, it would be the Kor'an. Or maybe the K'oran, just to be smart (as the apostrophe is sometimes completely meaningless). You'd never see Latin letters used to pronounce differently than the English norm, pretty much - at best, you might get an archaic usage.
That memo was intended as a joke. But you knew that, didn't you? In the Star Trek TOS episode "Friday's Child," the Capellans had names like Aka'ar and Ele'en. In that case, the apostrophe served the same function as the dieresis in words like coöperate, reëntry and naïve -- to indicate that two vowels that would otherwise form a diphthong are sounded separately.
Could always do what Macross did/does: A Spelling that doesn't even match how it pronounced by the characters.
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama To make a name really "alien" you gotta toss in an odd capital. O'BaMa.