this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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How else are you supposed to pronounce it?
There are three variants I’m aware of: /eɪ/ as in “day”, /æ/ as in “dad”, and /ɑː/ as in “spa”. I personally say it with /æ/.
Brits pronounce it day-ta, Americans, Canadians and Australians pronounce it dah-ta. Data pronounces it Day-ta.
American with an accent that is functionally General American here: it's day-duh, the t gets flapped. Dah-ta sounds very off to my ears, if anywhere in the US pronounces it that way, it's probably one of the weirder accents from the northeast.
American here, I can't speak for Canada, but I don't think I've ever heard any Americans in the US in real conversations say it differently than it is in Star Trek.
I've lived in nearly every major region of the US, so if there's a place where they still pronounce it like "dah-ta" it must be a very small regional thing. Normal working class people having actual conversions everywhere I've ever been say "day-ta".
I've read before that Patrick Stewart is the reason for that changing, but I don't know if that's true. Seems like an outsized influence for one guy to have on culture, but maybe!
Interesting. From some googling it looks like America is a mix of both but leaning towards day-ta, whereas the other countries are more consistently as I said.
I have a British friend who now lives in Canada and works in tech and has changed the way he says it (from day-ta to dah-ta, or really more like dah-da) for convenience. I had thought that it was an Atlantic divide but seems like there's more to it.
I'm a software developer in Canada. I've only ever heard "day ta"
Dat a