Latin Question

From: Etherman23 (etherman23@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 16:17:01 EST

Hi group,

I've just started working on a Romance conlang called Orientis, and
not having any educational background in any Romance language, I find
myself very confused over vowels. Latin vowels distinguish between
quality and quantity. Unfortunately the terms long and short are used
for both traits. I've looked through several grammar books for help
but I've ended up more confused. Here's my problem: My Latin
dictionary says that it marks quantity with diacritics. However, it
doesn't do it consistently. It also gives several rules for
determining quantity, but these don't cover all possible cases and
quite frequently disagree with the diacritics. Other books I've
looked at indicate long quality with a macron (unmarked vowels are
considered short). They give the same rules about vowel quantity,
which means that they're incomplete.

So I guess my question is, what are the rules for determining vowel
quantity and quality, if any? I don't want to get rid of quantity
(the easy solution) because Orientis is supposed to be Latin
influenced by Middle Persian which also has vowel quantity.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

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