Latin Lesson #17: Word Stress

Remember how I mentioned earlier that there are rules for Latin stress? I hope that by reading out loud for the past few weeks you will have guessed, consciously or subconsciously, what some of those rules are. Today, I will go ahead and explain the rules, and you can see if they match with what you were thinking:

1. Words that are one syllable. When a word is one syllable long, there is no dilemma: you stress that syllable. Here are some examples:
REX EST LEX.
NUNC NOX, MOX LUX.

2. Words that are two syllables. When a word is two syllables long, you always stress the first syllable. Here are some examples:
NO-men O-men.
HO-mo BUL-la.

3. Words that are three (or more) syllables. This is where things get tricky, because it all depends on the next-to-last syllable, which is called the "penultimate" syllable (paene-ultimum, almost-last). 

3a. If the penultimate syllable is long, then it gets stressed. There are 3 ways that a syllable can be long:

3a1. If the vowel in that syllable is followed by two or more consonants, the syllable is long. Here are some examples (notice that the consonants are not in the same syllable; what matters is that there are two consonants following the vowel):
ju-VEN-tus ... pau-PER-tas ... ae-TER-na ... ma-GIS-ter

3a1. If the vowel in that syllable is a diphthong (i.e. two vowels), the syllable is long. Here is an example:
the-SAU-rus

3a2. If the vowel in that syllable is long, the syllable is long. Here are some examples (you might hold these vowel sounds a bit longer because they are indeed long vowels):
vo-CA-tus ...   a-MI-cus ...  ingeni-O-sa ... for-TU-na

3b. If the penultimate syllable is not long, i.e. if it contains a short vowel that is not followed by two consonants, then it does not get stressed. Instead, the syllable that comes before it is stressed, the "antepenultimate" (ante-paene-ultimum, before-almost-last). Here are some examples:
sci-EN-tia ... fe-LI-citas ... SOM-nium ... O-culus

Although those rules may sound complicated, they are actually pretty simple. Even better: you can tell just by looking at about 90% of Latin words what the stress should be. Here are the you-can-just-see-it rules:

• If the word is just one syllable, that syllable is stressed!
• If the word is two syllables, the first syllable is stressed!
• For longer words, look at the next-to-last syllable:
  if a vowel followed by two consonants: it's stressed!
  if a diphthong: it's stressed!

The only time you will be unsure is when you are looking at a longer word and you need to know if the vowel is long or short. You cannot tell if the vowel is longer or short just by looking because in most Latin texts the long and short vowels are not marked; they are only marked as long or short in Latin dictionaries. So, because you cannot know when to stress those longer words just by looking, I will continue to mark the stressed syllable for you for those longer words.

Based on this new system, I've gone through the slideshow of the sayings and removed the stresses from the short words. Now the stress is marked only for the words that are three syllables or longer: ORANGE for the stressed penultimate (long syllable), and BLUE for the stressed antepenultimate.

For your practice today, click through the slideshow and read out loud, letting your ears listen to every word (click here for the full-screen version). You might even click through one time just read the ORANGE words out loud, and then click through reading just the BLUE words out loud. Then go through the slideshow again reading the entire saying each time. This is a good review of all the sayings so far too!

Plus, you will find a random LOLcat below; you can see a LOLcat at random each time the page reloads :-)

---

---

Click here to subscribe/unsubscribe.

---