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The three short syllables in reliquiās do not fit into dactylic hexameter because of the dactyl's limit of two short syllables so the first syllable is lengthened by adding another l. However, the pronunciation was often not written with double ll , and may have been the normal way of pronouncing a word starting in rel- rather than a poetic ...
In Greek synaeresis, two vowels merge to form a long version of one of the two vowels (e.g. e + a → ā), a diphthong with a different main vowel (e.g. a + ei → āi), or a new vowel intermediate between the originals (e.g. a + o → ō). Contraction of e + o or o + e leads to ou, and e + e to ei, which are in this case spurious diphthongs.
It altereth the sound of all the vowells, euen quite thorough one or mo consonants as, máde, stéme, éche, kínde, strípe, óre, cúre, tóste sound sharp with the qualifying E in their end: whereas, màd, stèm, èch, frind, strip, or, cut, tost, contract of tossed sound flat without the same E, And therefor the same loud and sharp sound in ...
An example is in this hendecasyllable (11-syllable line) by Garcilaso de la Vega: Los cabellos que al oro oscurecían. The hair that endarkened the gold. The words que and al form one syllable in counting them because of synalepha. The same thing happens with -ro and os-and so the line has eleven syllables (syllable boundaries are shown by a dot):
In the case of /u/, the quality u was normally preserved in the endings -um, -ung, -uc or after an accented syllable containing the /u/ sound (as in duguþ); in other contexts (e.g. hēafod, heofon), u was variably interchanged with o depending on dialect and time period, with the use of o generally increasing over time, although there was a ...
In words of two syllables, stress falls on the first syllable of the word (the penult, or second from the end): e.g., bó.nus, cír.cus. In words of three or more syllables, stress falls either on the penult or the antepenult (third from the end), according to these criteria:
A diphthong (/ ˈ d ɪ f θ ɒ ŋ, ˈ d ɪ p-/ DIF-thong, DIP-; [1] from Ancient Greek δίφθογγος (díphthongos) 'two sounds', from δίς (dís) 'twice' and φθόγγος (phthóngos) 'sound'), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. [2]
It did not occur when two or more syllables followed because of the opposing process of trisyllabic laxing. It only occasionally applied to the high vowels /i/ and /u/, e.g. OE wudu → ME /woːd/ → wood; OE wicu → ME /weːk/ → week. Most instances of /i/ and /u/ remained as such: OE hnutu → NE nut, OE riden → NE ridden.