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Macron

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A prosodic mark (¯) used in scansion to indicate a long syllable in classical meters or a stressed syllable in English verse.

Detailed Definition
A Macron (¯) is a diacritical mark placed over a vowel to indicate it is long in duration, crucial in classical prosody for scanning Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit verse where syllable length—not stress—determines meter; though rarely used in modern English poetry, understanding the macron aids students in analyzing quantitative meter, distinguishing between long and short syllables in dactylic hexameter or elegiac couplets, and appreciating how ancient poetic rhythm operates on temporal rather than accentual principles, thereby broadening conceptions of metrical possibility beyond stress-based systems.
Example
Example in poetry:
A macron marks long vowels: ā in Latin “amāre”; In classical scansion, ē in “mēns”; Modern dictionaries use macrons for pronunciation guides; In linguistic transcription, macrons indicate vowel length; Poetry students use macrons to scan dactylic hexameter
Additional Notes
Macron: A diacritical mark (¯) indicating a long vowel in classical prosody; essential for scanning Greek and Latin meter; not used in standard English versification.
Also Known As
Long mark Length symbol Vowel extension mark Duration indicator
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