New answers tagged pronunciation
0
My reaction is to recognize that Fortune is a foreign (non-Latin) name and should thus be pronounced according to the original language, if you happen to know it.
This is no different from pronouncing a French or Italian name in English according to the original pronunciation; not all will recognize the language and can apply its pronunciation, but some will....
-3
What's all this "bru-tay" nonsense? It's "brute", to rhyme with "newt" - a terse monosyllable. Caesar is making a bitter pun on the name. It's also the intimation of a nickname, indicating that he who was once a close friend has cast off all human feeling. And it's a brief, staccato phrase fitting a man who has just been stabbed ...
3
I'm afraid the answer is no. All these changes happened within English; trisyllabic laxing is a purely English change. For example, the vowel lengths in Latin are dēcīdō and dēcīsiōnem: the relevant vowel is long in both.
The Latin vowel length, note, is very seldom relevant in English. When a Latinate word appears in English, it usually came through Romance ...
5
decido and decisio(nem) both have a long i in the second syllable. I do not understand why you think these words are evidence for a "trisyllabic laxing" in Latin.
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