January 26, 2005

The Law of the Penult

Stress in Latin always falls on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable1.

If the word has two syllables, it falls on the penultimate (in this case first) syllable.

If the word has more than two syllables, it follows the Law of the Penult: if the penult is long it is stressed, if it is short the antepenult is stressed.

That's it, except for recognizing when a syllable is long. Long vowels and dipthongs are long, short vowels followed by two or more consonants are long. Everything else is short.

inimīcus
figūra
labōres
magnārum
patiēmur
perpauca
persaepe
poēta

ocellis
magister
intellegenda
adversōs

scientia
aequora
audācia
omnium

1 just in case these terms are unfamiliar: the ultimate is the last syllable, the penultimate is the second-to-last, and the antepenultimate is the third to last.

Posted by joshua at January 26, 2005 10:55 AM
Comments

Do you happen to know what the other terms are that come before antepenultimate, penultimate and ultimate? What are the terms for first and second in reference to syllable stress? I think there are five terms but there may be six. Thank you very much for this information. I have been searching for it for quite sometime.
sd

Posted by: Susan Dolphin at March 1, 2005 02:31 AM

Unfortunately, I think antepenultimate is as far as it goes. Technically there doesn't seem to be any reason one could not refer to the anteantepenultimate, but that just doesn't seem to be the way it's used. The only google hits I get on anteantepenultimate refer to this very topic and come to the conclusion I've just stated.

Posted by: Joshua at April 15, 2005 05:19 PM
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