Data

[Beverly Flanigan]

Recall that in "American Tongues" a computerese-talking guy (from NY?
Boston?) warns about erasing "the dater on the plater"--with linking
/r/.  (But what the heck is a plater?)

At 10:18 AM 6/16/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Larry and dInIs and Larry's wife and all the rest are on the
>money. Data appears to be the neuter plural of the past participle of
>_dare_ 'to give'--meaning 'things given' or, as we used to milk it for all
>it was worth back in high-school Latin, 'having-been-given things'. The
>singular was -datum- (rhymes with "got 'em"), but no one cared to talk
>about that.  On the other hand, U.S. and sentence geography could change
>that pronunciation radically. Did anyone at Boston Latin School say
>"dater" with hiatus-r, as in "These dater are screwy"?
>
>Peter
>
>On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>
> > Larry,
> >
> > I was bout to point out that my Latin would produce "data" (rhymes with
> > "crocka"), but I figgered my Hillbilly Latin might not be trusted. Now
> > we've got your word on it.
> >
> > dInIs
> >
> > >Besides /daet@/ and /deyt@/, there's the less frequent /daht@/ (rhyming
> > >with "lotta", "what a", or "terracotta"), which my wife, a non-Trekkie and
> > >non-techie, uses.  I imagine that it may actually be closer to the
> original
> > >Latin than /daeta/ is, although that's not why she uses it.
> > >
> > >larry
> >
> >
> > Dennis R. Preston
> > Department of Linguistics and Languages
> > Michigan State University
> > East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
> > preston at pilot.msu.edu
> > Office: (517)353-0740
> > Fax: (517)432-2736
> >


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm