Talk:desponsus

Important note about "feminine dēspōnsa" (with long "o")

Note that one recognized authority would make the "o" of "dēsponsa" (and its family of related words) short, not long.

In Hans Orberg's "Roma Aeterna", second edition, chapter XLIII, line 128, that word appears as "dēsponsa". But in the marginalia there we see quite the opposite, that the "o" should be long: "dēspondēre -spōnsum".

When I questioned the publisher (Hackett Publishing Company) about this contradiction in October 2021, they consulted with Jeanne Marie Neumann, author of "A Companion to Roma Aeterna" (same publisher), and they sent me back the following verbatim memo they had received from her on this issue:

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I think the marginalia is wrong. The vowel quantities are not given for the ppp in the OLD, but if you look at the root forms, the o is not long in any of them. I cannot do a word search in RedShelf of the text to see if this comes up elsewhere (well, I can, but I get zero results even when searching for desponsa or desponsa). I see no reason for the o to lengthen in a compound---if anything it would shorten; the vowel is in a heavy syllable so it would be "long" for the purpose of meter. O does not mark heavy syllables, just long vowels. So I think remove the macron from the margin.

Jeanne

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And there you have it.

P.S. Most other indicators, including this Wiktionary article itself, appear to incline in the opposite direction, i.e., to consider that "o" long.

Toddcs (talk) 18:30, 17 November 2023 (UTC)