Posted: Apr 24, 2019 1:06 am
don't get me started wrote:In some of the academic papers I read, the authors insist on treating the word 'data' as a countable noun, i.e. one that can be singular or plural.
"The data are conclusive..."
Nah. Data may have been countable in the original Latin, but it is a way to refer to 'information' and in English, 'information' is unambiguously non-countable.
( He told me a lot of informations*)
As I've mentioned before, transferring grammatical classes, morphology and the like across languages makes no sense to me.
Where do you stop?
I usually resist the Latinate form and treat it as an uncountable noun, even if my editors and reviewers bring it up.
'A single piece of data' not 'a datum' and 'Lots of data'.
Similarly, in speaking I often refer to curriculums not curricula.
But, upon reflection, I definitely use the phenomenon/phenomena distinction when I write, so I'm not quite the iconoclast I thought I was.
At least with the word 'data' I stick with the underlying principles of English pronunciation and don't put two short 'a' vowels in adjacent syllables in order to provide a stress contrast. I say 'day-tuh' (The second one is a schwa).
I have heard some people pronounce this word as 'dartar', which just sounds wrong to me...
Oh, how I wish that I've never learnt any Latin. It makes it really difficult for me to listen to stuff like "The media/phenomena/data is..." without it sticking in my craw. I'm making progress, though, no longer insisting that the plural of atlas, coming from Greek, is atlantes.
Oh, idea for a post in another thread now. Cya.