Languages and Linguistics

I learned that the stressed syllable of a word could be the ultima, the penult, or the antepenult. Classical Greek had pitch accents, but the classes I took substituted loudness for pitch. That was also the nature of the koine Greek, the language spoken in Hellenistic times (and the language of the Christian New Testament). It was also in Hellenistic times that people began to write the three kinds of accents (acute, grave, and circumflex) that we are familiar with in French. I learned the rules for assigning accents to Greek words, but I have forgotten those rules, just as I have forgotten conjugations and declensions.

It makes sense that words derived from Greek, like my examples, would have accents like those in Greek.