What do units say?

[abou]

Have you really read explicitly that that's the case in latin? That would mean that the last syllable would be emphasized and that is against standad desricption if classic latin pronunciation.

How so and why would that differ from any other declined form?

Triarii would have the emphasis over the 'a' just as it would if it were triarius, triario, and so forth.

I don't have a vox latina lying around here, but -ii doesn't become a single long syllable in anything I've read (certainly none of the professors I've ever had have omitted one of the two i's). They aren't dipthongs. The latter i has a macron over it when they are rendered with macrons also.

I should have read this about ten minutes earlier because I'm at the library and they have two or three copies of the book, but I have to leave for class (Roman Art and Architecture isn't going to learn itself). Maybe later today I'll check it out before I leave campus.

That was the only reference to this issue in Wheelock that I know of. Not dealing directly with pronunciation, but interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, Cicero likes doing that, but since the mod takes place before Cicero...