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This excerpt is from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut.

I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then?

I have no idea what "di'monds" means. I thought it was a typo, but all copies on the internet use the same spelling. Is it no different from "diamonds"?

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    In general, the apostrophe mark ' is used to indicate the omission of one or more letters that would be expected to be in a word, but are not vocalized in speech.
    – randomhead
    Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 14:42

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Most of the characters in the book speak in Southern US rural dialect. In standard English, 'diamonds' is pronounced with three syllables: di - a - monds, but the rural dialect speaker omits the middle syllable, and this omission is indicated in the printed speech by an apostrophe.

There are plenty of dialect variants in this book, e.g. ’bout (about), warn’t (wasn't) s’pose (suppose) etc.

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    Perhaps in some standard English dialects diamond has three syllables, but in Standard American English it usually only has two. Twain's spelling suggests that this was probably not true in his time.
    – Juhasz
    Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 17:18
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    Twain's spelling could also indicate what is sometimes called an "eye dialect." In other words, the spelling may suggest a dialect pronunciation, even if there is no actual substantive difference in pronunciation indicated.
    – Vegawatcher
    Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 17:29

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