0.5 Syllables and Stress — Epoché
What you will be able to do Divide a Latin word into syllables. Tell a heavy syllable from a light one. Apply the penultimate rule and place the stress on any Latin word, including words you have never seen. Read amīcus and dominus with the stress in the right place, and say why they differ. Read sentences like Non possum. [43] — I can't. — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 0.4 — diphthongs and digraphs. English stress has to be memorised word by word. You know that PHOtograph , phoTOgrapher and photoGRAPHic each put the push somewhere different, and no rule told you so — you learned them one at a time. Latin does not work that way. There is a rule, it has no exceptions worth the name, and it takes about ten minutes to learn. This is the single best bargain in the language. How it sounds The rule needs three things in place: syllables, weight, and then the rule itself. Take them in order. Syllables. A Latin word has as many syllables as it has vowels, counting each diphthong as one. Divide them like this: A single consonant between two vowels goes with the following vowel: ro-sa , a-mī-cus , do-mi-nus . Two consonants split, one to each side: por-ta , mag-nus , om-nis . But a stop plus l or r stays together and goes forward: pa-tri-a , tem-plum , a-grī-co-la . qu is one consonant for this purpose: a-qua , re-lin-quō . Weight. Every syllable is either heavy or light, and the distinction is not the same as long and short. A syllable is heavy if it has a long vowel, or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant. It is light only if it has a short vowel and ends in that vowel. Syllable Weight Why mī in a-mī-cus heavy long vowel cae in cae-lum heavy diphthong por in por-ta heavy ends in a consonant mi in do-mi-nus light short vowel, open ro in ro-sa light short vowel, open The rule. Now count syllables from the end of the word. A word of two syllables is stressed on the first: RO-sa , POR-ta , CAE-lum . Always, whatever the weights. A word of three or more : look at the second syllable from the end , the penultimate. If it is heavy, stress it. If it is light, stress the one before it instead. That is the whole thing. The stress never goes further back than the third syllable from the end, and it never lands on the last syllable at all. The two words that show the rule Put the two halves of the rule side by side. The words differ in one detail and the stress lands two syllables apart. Word Syllables Stress and why amīcus — friend a-mī-cus a-MĪ-cus — the penult mī has a long vowel, so it is heavy and takes the stress dominus — master do-mi-nus DO-mi-nus — the penult mi is light, so the stress retreats a syllable This is why the macrons of lesson 0.2 were not decoration. You cannot place the stress without knowing the vowel lengths. The only difference between the two words above, as far as the rule is concerned, is the bar over one i . Take the macrons away and a reader has to know the word already. Two consequences worth naming now, because they will save you from mistakes that English habits produce. First, the stress moves when the ending changes. amīcus is a-MĪ-cus , and so is the genitive a-MĪ-cī ; but a long word like agricola (farmer) is a-GRI-co-la in the nominative and a-gri-CO-lae in the genitive, because the penult changed. English speakers, used to stress being part of a word's identity, tend to nail it down in one place. In Latin it floats, following the rule. Second, a syllable closed by a consonant is heavy even if its vowel is short. magister (teacher) is ma-GIS-ter : the i is short, but the syllable ends in s , so it is heavy and takes the stress. This is the most common place for beginners to go wrong, because they look for a macron, see none, and retreat the stress. Forty words to practise on Read straight down the columns, saying each word aloud and pushing the syllable the rule selects. The stressed syllable is written in capitals in the second column so you can check yourself. Word Stress Why rosa RO-sa two syllables porta POR-ta two syllables caelum CAE-lum two syllables amīcus a-MĪ-cus penult long dominus DO-mi-nus penult light magister ma-GIS-ter penult closed fēmina FĒ-mi-na penult light nātūra nā-TŪ-ra penult long imperātor im-pe-RĀ-tor penult long agricola a-GRI-co-la penult light philosophia phi-lo-so-PHI-a penult long amīcitia a-mī-CI-ti-a penult light — stress retreats aeternus ae-TER-nus penult closed populus PO-pu-lus penult light senātus se-NĀ-tus penult long vēritās VĒ-ri-tās penult light virtūtem vir-TŪ-tem penult long corpora COR-po-ra penult light audīre au-DĪ-re penult long legere LE-ge-re penult light Look at the pair audīre and legere . Both are infinitives; both end -re ; they are stressed on different syllables because one has a long vowel in the penult and the other does not. When you reach the conjugations in the Forms volume, this difference will be how your ear tells the fourth conjugation from the third. And look at vēritās against virtūtem . Both are abstract nouns you half know from English ( verity , virtue ), and both have a long vowel — but in vēritās the long vowel is in the first syllable, which the rule does not care about, so the stress falls back to it only because the penult happens to be light. The rule looks at one syllable and one syllable only. Read it aloud Now real sentences. Read each aloud twice. On the first pass, mark where you put the push; on the second, check it against the rule word by word. Latin English The word to check Pater meus ubi est? [1] Where is my father? PA-ter , ME-us , U-bi — all two-syllable, all on the first Nihil de ea scio. [2] I know nothing about her. NI-hil ; sciō is one syllable in speech Opus tuum mihi placet. [3] I like your job. PLA-cet — penult, two syllables Id facere nunc non possum. [4] I can't do that right now. FA-ce-re — penult light, so it retreats Iam scio quid sit. [5] I already know what it is. iam one syllable; quid one syllable Domus eius mihi placet. [6] I like her house. DO-mus ,