this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Dayta - it comes from the Latin word Datum which is pronounced day tum. At least that's what my middle school science teacher would tell us

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Your science teacher was wrong, unfortunately. In Classical Latin, datum is pronounced as [ˈd̪ät̪ʊ̃ˑ] "dah-too(m)" and likewise data as ~~[ˈd̪äːt̪ä]~~ [ˈd̪ät̪ä] "dah-tah."

Not that Latin should really have a say in how we speak English anyhow.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

and likewise data as [ˈd̪äːt̪ä] “dah-tah.”

More like [ˈd̪ät̪ä], no long vowel. There's also some disagreements if short /a/ was [ä] or [ɐ], given the symmetry with /e i o u/ as [ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ]. (I can go deeper on this if anyone wants.)

Another thing that people don't often realise, when they say "you should pronounce it like in Latin!", is that Latin /d t/ were different from English/German /d t/. They were considerably less aspirated, and as your transcription shows they were dental.

That's just details though. Your core point (Latin didn't use a diphthong in this word) is 100% correct.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

More like [ˈd̪ät̪ä], no long vowel.

That's my B, I was looking at Ecclesiastical Latin for that one :3

Interesting points though, thanks for the elaboration. Shows the layers of silliness that is depending upon other languages for the way we pronounce words.