the case. We know in English how
much the unaccented syllables suffer in a long word like "laboratory." In
Latin the long unaccented vowels and the final syllable, which was never
protected by the accent, were peculiarly likely to lose their full value.
As a result, in conversational Latin certain final consonants tended to
drop away, and probably the long vowel following a short one was regularly
shortened when the accent fell on the short syllable, or on the syllable
which followed the long one. Some scholars go so far as to maintain that
in course of time all distinction in quantity in the unaccented vowels was
lost in popular Latin. Sometimes the influence of the accent led to the
excision of the vowel in the syllable which followed it. Probus, a
grammarian of the fourth century of our era, in what we might call a
"Guide to Good Usage"[20] or "One Hundred Words Mispronounced," warns his
readers against masclus and anglus for masculus and angulus. This is the
same popular tendency which we see illustrated in "lab'ratory."

The quality of vowels as well as their quantity changed. The obscuring of
certain vowel sounds in ordinary or careless conversation in this country
in such words as "Latun" and "Amurican" is a phenomenon which is familiar
enough. In fact a large number of our vowel sounds seem to have
degenerated into a grunt. Latin was affected in a somewhat similar way,
although not to the same extent as present-day English. Both the ancient
grammarians in their warnings and the Romance languages bear evidence to
this effect.

We noticed above that the final consonant was exposed to danger by the
fact that the syllable containing it was never protected by the accent. It
is also true that there was a tendency to do away with any difficult
combination of consonants. We recall in English the current
pronunciations, "February," and "Calwell" for Caldwell. The average Roman
in the same way was inclined to follow the line of least resistance.
Sometimes, as in the two English examples just given, he avoided a
difficult combination of consonants by dropping one of them. This method
he followed in saying santus for sanctus, and scriserunt for scripserunt,
just as in vulgar English one now and then hears "slep" and "kep" for the
more difficult "slept" and "kept." Sometimes he lightened the
pronunciation by metathesis, as he did when he pronounced interpretor as
interpertor. A third device was to insert a vowel, as illiter