Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>

> Actually, didn't Latin usually syllabify words like "abest" as "ab-est"
> (ab- being a prefix)?  At least, that's what it says in my Latin
> dictionary.
Not as far as I know, I think this is just "Latin as learnt in schools"-
i.e. where the language (notably stress) is altered to make it easier for
the learner. Like inflections are generally stressed (eg. ama.bo) by
learners to aid memorisation. I think the ancient Romans would have said
a-best (stress on first), but since they aren't about these days, we can't
actually ask them.