Data

[Aaron E. Drews]

>
>         I'm a /deyt@/ user myself, but my mother told me this came up on
>"Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire" tonight, and the "correct" answer was
>given as /deyt@/, whereas she said she uses /daet@/, much to my surprise.

Being a pedant, I use /daet@/ because this is what I was told it is in Latin.

If there is variation in the word, can there be a "correct"
pronunciation, even if one has prescriptivist tendencies?  Or is this
just another problem with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"?



>There's a local software company here in Tucson which calls itself Beta
>Data. I've heard the /ae/ so rarely that it must be a declining minority
>usage (in the US, not Britain).

I can't take an informal survey.  Everybody I know has been
influenced (contaminated?) by Star Trek.

--Aaron
--
________________________________________________________________________
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron      Departments of English Language and
aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                    Theoretical & Applied Linguistics

  "MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
        --Death