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Do you pronounce "Data" as "Day-ta" or "Dah-ta"?
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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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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
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.
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.
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.