I’m not as much into the pronunciation of words as I am into their structure; I wasn’t raised in the kind of house wherein we know how to pronounce every word in our respective reading vocabularies. (And given the sizes thereof, that would have been unlikely in any case. We read a bit.)
I know that James Thurber pubished a rant once about the pronunciation of “schedule” as “skedjuel,” and this latter appears to be more dominant these days, rather than what I think of as the British version of the word.
I had not heard of The Anchoress’s “thuh” vs. “thee” distinction. My first inclination was to say that I don’t follow it, but I know that if the noun begins with a vowel one always does something to clue the listener in as to when the transition occurs between words. After all, we are not thuh French. We are inheritors of a linguistic tradition that started with thee English.
Thee Encyclopedia is no help to us, here, as it contains no pronunciation guidelines. Thuh dictionary, however, only gives us the “thuh” version.
If I really wanted to start a fight, I’d say something about ha-RASS-ment versus HAIR-ess-ment. Oops.
Data is “dayta.” No exceptions.
Aunt is “ant,” though the regional—and slightly stuffy—”ahnt” is permissible.
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Oh, come on: Data *are* “dayta”, the plural of datum. 😉
The word “data” is singular; the set is represents comprises individual thingies. So, plural.
I have always used data [day-ta] as the plural of datum [daa-tum], which I think is consonant with it’s Latin origin. Datum seems to have fallen into disuse with the advent of personal computers ca. 1980, that one compact and sensible word being replaced by “a piece of data” or “pieces of data” [which would simply be data as a plural, although one could conceivably hear Long John Silver’s parrot screeching the background, ‘PIECES OF DATA, PIECES OF DATA” with the first “a” being long].
Most American English speakers seem to have unconquerable resistance to the latinate singular ending “um”, and as data have [no,no,no! not the data has] flooded out of their former little niche in the University sciences, another wonderful piece of English vocabulary has been left to rust.
Oh come on! Regional? Stuffy? I defy you to find a geographically less-stuffy population than New Englanders! Oh, we may be a bit stand-offish at first, especially if you make fun of thuh way we talk, but nobody can pahk a cah thuh way we can, especially at Hahvahd. So please, leave thee ahnts out of it!
Um …. this is a post about pronunciation …. I think she’s referring to the dayta (a as in gate) vs. datta (a as in cat) controversy over pronunciation, not quantity issues.
I don’t know how the convention developed, but in my family, traditional aunts, holding their title by blood or marriage, are ants, but honorary aunts, longtime family friends, are ahnts.
Joseph:
Are you really confused about the difference between discussing a word *as a word,* versus using it correctly in a sentence? Have you tried to eat the label on a soup can for supper? If so, how did that work out for you?
If the data are as plural as you insist, they wouldn’t all be crammed into the same “niche.” Would they? I think you should give each little datum a bit more legroom. If you treat a datum correctly, it will begin to assert its singularity in a more consistent fashion, rather than running with the herd all the time.
Thank you for qualifying the symbol ‘data’. 😉
The empirical truth is that using the plural in a singular way is common usage, and I’m no more than a pedantic fart for bringing it up.
Cheers,
Chris
I bet those fun folks at Language Log are already on this.
But you’ve heard this pronunciation before. It’s in Shakespeare and stuff like that.
I feed th’animals.
Also, router is “RAO-ter” instead of “ROO-ter.” I knew a tech writer that used the latter pronunciation, and I didn’t come down off the ceiling until she changed jobs.
I think in that situation I would have managed to gnaw my neck right off of my shoulders . . . or hers, maybe.
Data is “dayta.” No exceptions.
Except in countries that speak English, where it is “dah-tuh”.
“Dayta” is the correct pronunciation for the name of a Star Trek character.
Well, I’m fat enough that I probably should be eating soup can labels for supper–when I’m not eating crow. And I am so terminally confused that I routinely try to eat the language when I’m served the metalanguage. But who isn’t?
“Data” is certainly singular enough to have generated considerable discussion here, even if each individual datum should pipe down and speak only when spoken for. As should I.
But they all do appear to have stayed piped down long enough that most of us have forgotten about them. And, sure as “eggs” is eggs, a data bank may not be a bank of datums, but a penny bank is a bank of penny.
A penny for your thoughts.
When Dorothy Parker came upon an American actor whose season on the London boards had caused him to go native — he had a busy “shedule” — she said: “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re full of skit.”