As a native speaker I refuse to say 'these data' or the word datum. I prefer 'this data' for plural and 'this piece of data' for singular. Yes I know its wrong in some sense, but I think that ship has sailed

I've also seen "data point" used when a singular form is required. I think in common usage, "data" is a mass noun like "mayonnaise" rather than a plural.

That's a good point! Because the compound noun rules in English normally call for all nouns, other than the head of the noun phrase, to be singular.

This applies to the singulars that denote single objects too: scissor lift, pant leg; not scissors lift or pants leg.

According to this principle, it should be datum point, where only the head noun point may be pluralized.

"Datum point" exists, but I've never seen or heard it in use; it's just a "confirm by Google".

> in common usage, "data" is a mass noun like "mayonnaise"

Were you also commenting on its pronunciation? I'd instead say: "data" is a mass noun like "mahyonnaise" and "tomahto sauce".

'Data point' - much better!

"Datum" (and its plural, "datums") is legitimate if you're talking about, eg, one filled-out survey form, or one array element. It's basically like "water molecule"; you wouldn't say "these water are cold", but "this datum is a outlier" makes sense.

While I understand, and agree that you are correct, I still don't like this wording. I prefer the sound of 'this data point is an outlier' or 'this point is an outlier'

> that ship has sailed

Wha? Oh, you mean quae navis navigaverunt.

Haha yes of course!

Data is a plural of datum, if you're considering the individual pieces, but it's more commonly used (in my experience as a US native) as a collection singular like sand. Ex the sand has formed a hill, the data has filled the hard drive.

I haven't heard the term "collection singular" before; I'd call that a mass noun or non-count noun. (Which I agree "data" has become.)

Mass noun is indeed the proper term, which I'll try to remember in the future. :)

We are reading a lovely article about how "childer" is a plural, and children is some sort of troubling double plural. The word data is somewhat older and its use has had even more time to change. I wish the dictionary would lose the fight on data and we could all just say "the data is conclusive" and be happy about it. It sounds much more natural.

In some contexts the plural of datum is datums, making it a bit more complicated than just a collective noun.

That's interesting. I've never encountered "datums" but a quick Google search turned up plenty of examples (like "Tidal Datums") and that "This plural is permissible only in the sense of 'fixed reference points'" [1].

Which contexts did you have in mind?

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/datums

Yes things like surveying and mapping was what I was thinking—similar.

dat- is the stem, I suppose, -um is a grammatical ending. Data simply suits the English ear better because it's close to the nominal suffix -er. How do you like this dater point?

One more datum and it'll blow!

And in the UK, Lego.

Lego is the brand name; "let's play with Lego" is short for "let's play with the Lego bricks". I think it's much closer to a group noun :)

See also: Meccano, Duplo, Brio, Scalextric.

In Germany we even stopped pretending that it's just a bunch of bricks and use the word as if it were the name of the game. We say "Let's play Lego". Does this sound strange in English?

LEGO(tm) brand bricks

You mean "not in the US"? Im not sure exactly, but only have heard people in US saying "Legos". (Australia here, we play with Lego!)

Totally opaque to whether that's "lego's" or "legos" and children in general probably don't care for an overzealous syntactic classification of single morphemes either.

Is "gimme the lego over there" strange? I think it is, and if it is, then it's an interesting dater point to support this hypothesis.

I have the same pet peeve with media, especially in french where média is used only as a singular, with les médias for the plural. Médium is exclusively used for ways of expression, and médiums for speaking with the dead. I get that language evolves but this specific evolution really bothers me.

Media is another word that is not used consistently either. It is the plural of medium in latin but is not always understood as a plural.

Fewer people know Latin in Britain now. So the Latin derived words are usually used as fully adopted words target than being treated as quoted Latin. This seems right to me.

"Forums" (rather than fora) seems a little awkward to me, but "data point" seems more natural than "datum". But then I never learnt Latin at school. At some point we need to stop applying the grammar rules of foreign languages to fully adopted words.

the point is that they were initially adopted specifically in this way in the dictionary in the first place. Ignorance and years of bad education took their toll.

The visa thing sounds like a back-formation unique to your mother tongue. The word "visa" is the past participle of videre (Latin for "to see"). So it is not a plural in its formation/derivation.

You're mistaken. The verb is vidēre, videō, vidī, visum.

There is also the noun vīsum, -ī, plural visa with the primary meaning the seen [thing], appearance, perception. This is the word that was borrowed into English and other languages.

Why not look it up before you assert someone is wrong? It's explained in detail in [0]. It's clear that visa is used as a past participle, not as a noun, and it's applied in the singular. There is no support anywhere for the use of visum as a singular and visa as a plural. Which is what I believe I said above.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/visa

My recent peeve is Americans who use 'bespoke' instead of 'custom.'

And 'in agreeance' instead of 'in agreement.'

Bespoke and custom are different, so if they are interchanging them without understanding the difference then I can understand that would annoy

You has good listenance skills but rate lower on the acceptance scale, agreeance on that?

That's because "data" is a "mass noun".

Think coffee - you have one coffee (singular), two coffees (plural), and some coffee (an indeterminate amount).

One datum, Two data, Some data.

"People" too - as inconsistently numbered as data.

That one is actually because it's two different words:

"people" is the plural form of "person", i.e. one person, two people, as a group

"people" (pl. "peoples") is a group of people as a unit, e.g. a tribe or an ethnic group or the citizens of a country

"persons" is ALSO the plural of "person" but only used when you talk about individuals rather than a group (e.g. "person of interest" -> "persons of interest", not "people of interest")

Yes this is a bit awkward and yes sometimes what's grammatically possible still sounds awkward even to native speakers (e.g. I'd argue "the polices" is a legitimate term when discussing multiple police organisations of a country as an abstract group but it sounds extremely wrong to most people apparently).

I believe "persons" is similar to "people" but differs in register.

For example, there is a UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Obviously, native speakers would say "people with disabilities" in almost every situation, but that would be too informal for the title of a treaty.

Likewise, law enforcement use formal speech such as "persons of interest" to bolster their authority, but nobody would ever say "I sat next to two Australian persons on the flight".

Um, I'm a native speaker and might say "I sat next to two Australian persons on the flight."

Admittedly, it's more likely I'd say "I sat next to two Ozzies on the flight." (No, not Aussies, Ozzies. Like Ozzy Ozbourne. Because that's how it sounds to me when Aussies say 'Aussies.')

Its uneasy coexistence with the usually-technically-valid-and-occasionally-preferred persons is the real problem. Peoples is pretty rare and only for the specific case where it's referring to a plurality of tribes/nations as peoples...

Still - I'm pretty sure I encounter the word "peoples" more frequently than the word "datum." :-)

I see the word datum often in code

Yeah? I don't. And it doesn't seem like a great name in code. Link me to some examples?

In Australia, is the singular of darta "dartum"? (Genuine question for any Aussies)

We use the spelling datum/data. We pronounce it 'dar-ta' not 'day-taa'. I want to say we pronounce it 'day-tum' not 'dar-tum' but both sound fine to me, possibly thanks to all of the exported American English we consume or possibly just because we're weird.

I appreciate the apparent strangeness of this, but it's certainly not unique within the language.

That's English! :)

uh.. I don't think dartum is used, I've never heard it. "A piece of data" maybe.. But it's rare to have to talk of just one.