In another thread on this site a question was asked about the pronunciation of the word Caribbean; that discussion focused on the position of the accent. Cognate forms of the word Caribbean have existed in European languages and English since the discovery of the New World. The New Latin form caribbaeus, available for international communication in Latin, provides a plausible answer to the question: ae is a diphthong in Latin, and for metrical purposes diphthongs are treated as long vowels. A long vowel in the penultimate position of a word gets the stress accent.
But is it appropriate in contemporary spoken English to rely on such historical usage? And in particular, what sense does it make to rely on the historical position of the accent when, in everyday speech, the rules for the pronunciation of the Latin vowels are ignored? Note that in typical English usage the e in Caribbean is pronounced as the e in the word me — in other words like the Latin i. And that Latin i is notorious for becoming a weak vowel, for shifting from long to short. And isn’t that what has happened when Caribbean is pronounced "ca-RIB-be-en"?
In other words, if you insist that the accent be on the be of Caribbean, wouldn’t it make just as much sense to insist on using the Latin vowel sound for the same syllable?
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