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I am working through ch 1 of Wheelock's Latin, and I am confused as to when the vowel immediately preceding a personal ending should receive a macron. For example, here is the present indicative active conjugation for the verb amāre "to love, like":
Why is it a long ā for amās versus a short a for amat?
If you're using the 7th edition of Wheelock's Latin (the most recent edition), this is explained at the bottom of page 4:
Note that the stem vowel has no macron in certain forms (e.g., moneō, laudānt); learn the following rule, which will make it easier to account for macrons that seem to disappear and reappear arbitrarily:
Vowels that are normally long are regularly shortened when they occur immediately before another vowel (hence moneō instead of *monēō), before -m, -r, or -t at the end of a word (hence laudat, not *laudāt), or before nt or nd in any position (laudant, not *laudānt: the asterisks here and elsewhere in this book indicate a hypothetical form not actually occurring in classical Latin).
The 7th edition was significantly revised/expanded; I don't remember whether earlier editions have a similar explanation.
I'd say it was best at this stage not to worry about long and short vowels.
Whether a vowel is long or short is important in scanning verse, and so the 'macron' is meticulously used in dictionaries and grammars to indicate 'long'.
A vowel, and thus a syllable is long (a as in car) if so marked, otherwise it is short (a as in cat).
