(question) Latin pronunciation (stress rule)

[McGonnagle]

amantur or amantur?
monentur or monentur?
Why?

Thanks!!

[Explorer]

Amantur and monentur because the penult syllable is short.

Note: vowels before nd or nt are regularly short.

[McGonnagle]

Explorer, thanks for your response!

I watched this Youtube video to find that it looks like if a short vowel ends in a consonant, then it is called long/heavy syllable.

I may not totally understanding this video. I'm also not sure if amantur and monentur are for this case in this video. Any idea?

[Explorer]

if a short vowel ends in a consonant, then it is called long/heavy syllabe.

Salve! I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. I'm not an expert in Latin prosody, but as far as I know if the vowel is long or a diphthong, the syllable is long. And viceversa: if the vowel is short, the syllable is short.

In the case of amantur the second syllabe is short because it comes before the consonant cluster nt. Therefore the stress should go in the antepenult syllable. If you have any doubts, you can take a look at a conjugation table that uses macrons to mark long vowels.

[McGonnagle]

if a short vowel ends in a consonant, then it is called long/heavy syllabe.

Salve! I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. I'm not an expert in Latin prosody, but as far as I know if the vowel is long or a diphthong, the syllable is long. And viceversa: if the vowel is short, the syllable is short.

In the case of amantur the second syllabe is short because it comes before the consonant cluster nt. Therefore the stress should go in the antepenult syllable. If you have any doubts, you can take a look at a conjugation table that uses macrons to mark long vowels.

Explorer, thanks for your response!!

In this video, it says there are three cases for long syllable.

1. a long vowel
2. a diphthong
3. a short vowel is closed with consonants (or end in consonant(s) )

The third one which I don't totally understand but wonder it means this;

For instance, magister
ma-gis-ter, even though the penult is short, because the short vowel (i) is closed with two consonants (g and s), so it should be ma-gis-ter. (stress on "gis")

also,
ōrnāmentum, ōr-nā-men-tum (stress on "men")
columna, co-lum-na (stress on "lum")

according to this, monentur and amantur would be
mo-nen-tur, a-man-tur ??? or mo-ne-ntur? a-ma-ntur? I don't know what to do with "ntur". Should it be all together or (vowel+)n-tur? In English, a suffix normally should stay together if I remember it correctly, how about Latin?

[Explorer]

The video is right and well explained but I think it's simplified and omits some specific rules. Grammar says that all vowels followed by -nt and -nd are usually short. E.g.: it should not be amandus but amandus. The vowel in the penult syllable is short, even if the syllable ends in consonant. The usual exception to this rule occurs in compounds, which it's not the case we have here.

If you look up nouns or verbs in declesion / conjugaton tables that mark the length of the vowels with macrons, you'll see that they are ideed short. That's what I do when I'm not sure about the right pronunciation of a word. I'm afraid I cannot add much more to what I have already said. Again, I'm no expert, so please take this with a grain of salt.

[McGonnagle]

Thank you so much for your time!!

[lfsvalerio]

It is amantur, and monentur. Latin has one simple rule for stress:

• The penultimate is always stressed unless it is light, and a light syllable is one that ends in a short vowel.

Forget suffixes here. For finding the weight of syllables all consonant clusters are typically separated. There is one case where that's optional: consonant clusters with P/B/C/K/G/T/D/F + L/R. So it can be both te-ne-brae or te-neb-rae.

Think of Spanish or Italian and how most words are accented in the penultimate, like amante, while Spanish has tinieblas and Italian has tenebre.

[McGonnagle]

There is one case where that's optional: consonant clusters with P/B/C/K/G/T/D/F + L/R. So it can be both te-ne-brae or te-neb-rae.

This tip really helps! Gratias!

[lfsvalerio]

I also forgot to mention, there are some details that are important:

• H is not considered a consonant, it's only an aspiration mark and it's often elided!
  So a word like philosophus is not p-hi-lo-sop-hus but phi-lo-so-phus, making the penutimate light and unnacented.

• I and Z are always double in the middle of a word, so they are never written double as it's not needed.
  Baptizo is actually bap-tiz-zo, and that makes the penultimate syllable heavy. So it's accented.

• Finally, X are two consonants disguised as one! Remember that in a word like cōnexus, which actually sounds like cō-nec-sus!

This is all within the rule. There are also some very specific exceptions. This video is a very good summary of it all, so I recommend watching it:

[McGonnagle]

@lfsvalerio
Thanks! I started to have a confidence on Latin accent!