2518: Penultimate Stress Rule Nov 4, 2021

Languages often have inbuilt rules for how each word will take stress, such as Finnish or Proto-Italic were stress is indefinitely on the first syllable, but other times it is dependant on other factors in the environment. Even in Classical Latin, which is slightly more standard, the penultimate stress rule states that if the penultimate syllable is naturally long or if it ends with a consonant it will have the stress accent, and otherwise the stress accent falls on the third-to-last syllable. There are some exceptions, especially around sounds that have been elided or historically syncopated (or of course, doesn't have enough syllables), but this will cover the vast majority of Latin words, and words of other languages.