Bob Nold wrote: "Because, in Latin, the second "I" is long, and in English it's pronounced long. (Appeals to pronounce the ending as “ee-ee” are rejected.)" I would suggest that whoever is advising you to pronounce it ee-ee is giving you bad advice - which you have wisely rejected. The first "i" is short, the second one is long. So using your spellings, I guess that would be e-ee. This seemingly trivial distinction is important because that short "i" forms the penultimate syllable. When that syllable is long, it gets the stress. When that syllable is short, the stress falls on the syllable before that one. It's good to know about that short "i" because it often appears in compound words. It is the standard connective vowel used to join stems to form compound Latin or Latin form words. Jim McKenney _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/