heittomerkki

Heittomerkki is a Finnish punctuation mark, equivalent to the apostrophe in English. Its primary function is to indicate the omission of letters within a word or to denote a possessive form. For example, it is used in contractions such as "eikä" becoming "eik’" or to show that a word is part of a genitive case, like "Pekka’s" in English, which would be "Pekan".

In Finnish, heittomerkki is also employed when forming compound words or when a proper noun is followed by a possessive suffix. For instance, if a company name is "Oy", and you want to indicate possession, it would be written as "Oy:n". Similarly, when a word is taken from another language and suffixes are attached, the heittomerkki can be used to maintain clarity, especially if the foreign word ends in a vowel. This ensures that the grammatical function of the suffix is correctly understood in relation to the original word. It is a crucial element in maintaining the correct pronunciation and grammatical structure of Finnish sentences.