Dear Paul,

Thanks for your clarifications on this subject, really when I talk about
difficulties I didn't think in emphasis, but rather in vowels pronunciation.
I tend to forget that in romance languages (those derived of Latin, as you
know) we conserve quite similar rules for emphasis as in Latin and we learn
them since we are in the creddle, so Latin pronunciation sounds natural for
us. Even more, as Latin rules for emphasis were a little complex, we invent
the accents that could seem a mess at first for English speakers, but lets
you know with a few rules (just three for Spanish) how any word must be
pronounced even if you has never seen it or heard about it.

About vowels pronunciation, I have a friend (English) that told me a tip:
just imagine there is a "h" after each vowel. So "Turritella" would be "Tuh-
rrih-teh-lah". Otherwise, if you pronounce it as it reads in English you
obtain "Tiurraitilla" in Latin: quite different as you can see and worst,
as I said before, almost unrecognizable (and this was an easy one).
This "h" rule is not perfect, of course, but looks very simple and works
very well with most Latin words.

Anyway, my intention was to ask for a little effort that allow us to
maintain a coherent system wich has let us understand each other until now.

Best regards or, in Latin, "vale"

Alfonso Pina
Malaga
Spain
http://www.eumed.net/malakos