roughout frankly
Anglicized. According to Burney a like principle was followed by
Burke when he read French poetry aloud. He read it as though it were
English. Thus on his lips the French word _comment_ was pronounced as
the English word _comment_.

The rule that overrode all others, though it has the exceptions given
below, was that vowels and any other diphthongs than _au_ and _eu_, if
they were followed by two consonants, were pronounced short. Thus _a_
in _magnus_, though long in classical Latin, was pronounced as in our
'magnitude', and _e_ in _census_, in Greek transcription represented
by [Greek: eta], was pronounced short, as it is when borrowed into
English. So were the penultimate vowels in _villa_, _nullus_, _c[ae]spes_.

This rule of shortening the vowel before two consonants held good even
when in fact only one was pronounced, as in _nullus_ and other words
where a double consonant was written and in Italian pronounced.

Moreover, the parasitic _y_ was treated as a consonant, hence our
'v[)a]cuum'.

In the penultima _qu_ was treated as a single consonant, so that the
vowel was pronounced long in _[=a]quam_, _[=e]quam_, _in[=i]quam_,
_l[=o]quor_. So it was after _o_, hence our 'coll[=o]quial'; but in
earlier syllables than the penultima _qu_ was treated as a double
consonant, hence our 'sub[)a]queous', 'equity', 'iniquity'.

EXCEPTIONS.

1. When the former of the two consonants was _r_ and the latter
another consonant than _r_, as in the series represented by _larva_,
_verbum_, _circus_, _corpus_, _laburnum_, the vowels are a separate
class of long vowels, though not really recognized as such. Of course
our ancestors and the Gradus marked them long because in verse the
vowel with the two consonants makes a long unit.

2. A fully stressed vowel before a mute and _r_, or before _d_
or _pl_, was pronounced long in the penultima. Latin examples are
_labrum_, _Hebrum_, _librum_, _probrum_, _rubrum_, _acrem_, _cedrum_,
_vafrum_, _agrum_, _pigrum_, _aprum_, _veprem_, _patrem_, _citrum_,
_utrum_, _triplus_, _duplex_, _Cyclops_. Moreover, in other syllables
than the penultima the vowel in the same combinations was pronounced
long if the two following vowels had no consonant between them, as
_patria_, _Hadria_, _acrius_. (Our 'triple' comes from _triplum_ and
is a duplicate of '_treble_'. Perhaps the short vowel is due to its
passage through French. Our 'citron' comes from _citronem_, in which
_i_ was short.)