#Usually "statuses", but some people use "status"

As others have mentioned, there are several possible plural forms of *status*.

-  *statuses,* regularly formed using the English plural suffix -(e)s. This is listed in various dictionaries e.g. [Collins English Dictionary][1], [Merriam Webster][2].
- *status,*  taken from Latin. This is listed in a few dictionaries e.g. the Oxford English Dictionary (which actually gives three forms): 

 > Pl. (*rare*) *status* /ˈsteɪtjuːs/, (now usu.) *statuses* /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/, (*rare*) *statusses* /ˈsteɪtəsɪz/.

It’s not objectively better to use the Latinate plural form, or to try to pronounce it similarly to the way the Romans did. *Status* has been an English word, not just a Latin word, for a long time now. Latinate plurals ending in *-us* are rarely used in English, and in fact, usage guides by authors like H.W. Fowler and Bryan Garner say the English form *-uses* is generally preferable.

To me, it seems simpler to just go with the regular English plural *statuses,* but if you prefer to use the Latinate plural *status* for whatever reason, you’ll have to make some additional choices about pronunciation (it doesn't seem obvious to me how to pronounce it).

# Pronunciation notes for plural "status"##

### Background
In Classical Latin, the singular of this word was pronounced something like [ˈstatus] or [ˈstatʊs], and the plural was pronounced [ˈstatuːs].

But there is no direct contact between present-day English and Latin. Latin words entered English via a mixture of transmission over centuries (with some pronunciation changes naturally occuring during this transmission), and learned borrowing (with some pronunciation features established as conventional standard spelling-pronunciations).

In addition, English doesn’t even have the exact same sounds as Latin.

For these reasons, English speakers don’t as a rule pronounce borrowed Latin words with their original pronunciations. (Some people try harder than others, but even the people who try to do this generally only approximate Latin vowel sounds with the closest English ones.) The pronunciations people actually use are based on various additional factors such as custom, spelling-pronunciation and analogy.

Let's start with trying to figure out the pronunciation of the second syllable. Here are the possibilities:

### /tjuːs/ "tyooce": t + traditional English pronunciation of "long u"  ###

As you may have noticed earlier, the Oxford English Dictionary transcribes the pronunciation of plural *status* as "/ˈsteɪtjuːs/".

This is also the pronunciation recommended by the original *Dictionary of Modern English Usage* by H.W. Fowler, 1926 (as reproduced in the new 2009 edition) in the entry for "-us":

> Many [words ending in "-us"] are from Latin fourth-declension words, whose Latin plural is *-us* (pronounced ūs); but the English plural *-uses* is almost always preferred, as in *prospectuses.*

(Fowler used the symbol "ū" to represent the sound /juː/, as described in his entry titled "Phonetics" where he defines it as the vowel found in the word "mūte".)

### /tuːs/ "tooce": t + yodless "long u" ###
In some words from Latin, such as *gubernatorial,* people tend to pronounce “long u” as /uː/ (an “oo” sound) rather than the more usual English /juː/ (a “you” sound). You can see from [Greg Bacon’s answer][3] that tchrist equated *statūs* with "statoose", a spelling that suggests the English pronunciation /ˈstætuːs/ or /ˈsteɪtuːs/. The use of /uː/ rather than /juː/ may be in part due to a desire to more closely approximate the "original" Latin pronunciation associated with the letter "u", which did not have a palatal onglide.

This pronunciation is given in *[Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage,* Fourth Edition][4], by Jeremy Butterfield:

> Many [words ending in "-us"] are from Latin fourth-declension words, whose Latin plural is *-ūs* (pronounced /-uːs/); but the English plural *-uses* is almost always preferred, as in *prospectuses.*

### /tʃuːs/ "chooce": yod coalescence ###
A process in English called [yod-coalescence][5] ("yod" refers to the "y" sound at the start of "yes," written /j/ in IPA) has affected many words with the sequence /tj/. Before an unstressed vowel, this consonant cluster has changed to /tʃ/ (the "ch" sound of "cheek") for most speakers. For example, consider the common pronunciations of *statute* /ˈstætʃuːt/, *stature* /ˈstætʃər/, and *nature*  /⁠ˈneɪtʃər/. This suggests that for some people, an original /ˈsteɪtjuːs/ might end up being pronounced as /ˈsteɪtʃuːs/. However, I haven't found any references that mention this possibility for this word, so I am listing it as a possible pronunciation on a purely hypothetical basis.

### /təs/? "tuss": closed-syllable shortening ###
Another complication arises when we consider the general rule of English pronunciation that gives a short value to a single vowel letter in an orthographically closed syllable (a syllable that ends in a consonant), regardless of the quantity of the vowel in Latin. For example, the Latin word *jūs* “law” was pronounced in Latin with a “long u” (/juːs/) but its traditional pronunciation in English uses a “short u”: “juss” /dʒʌs/.

It's true there are a number of exceptions to this rule in words taken from Latin; the largest class is words ending in *-es* /iːz/ (which includes many fairly commonly used plural forms of words ending in *-⁠is, -⁠ix* or *-⁠ex,* such as *axis*/*axes, matrix*/*matrices,* and *index*/*indices*). However, the pronunciation of *-⁠es* has another irregularity that adds some uncertainty: it not only has a “long e” vowel, but the final “s” is pronounced as the voiced consonant /z/, rather than as voiceless /s/.

I haven't found any dictionaries or usage guides that directly list an /əs/ pronunciation for the plural form "status". However, I found two documents that seem to indicate in an indirect fashion that this pronunciation has been used, by implying that the plural (and the singular genitive) of a fourth-declension noun is not distinguished in pronunciation from the singular (nominative) by most doctors:

> In fact, there *is* a distinction between the *-us* endings above: in the genitive singular and nominative plural, the "u" is a long vowel (*-ūs*), whereas in the nominative singular it is short (*-us*). You do not need to memorize this, however, since you are not at all likely to see *manūs* in a medical document of any kind, and **it is extremely unlikely that you will hear a doctor pronouncing the two words *manus* and *manūs* differently.** 

(*[The Hippocrates Code: Unraveling the Ancient Mysteries of Modern Medical Terminology][6],* by JC McKeown, Joshua Smith, p. 131)

An older source also describes the genitive as being "like the nominative", which to me implies that the author would pronounce these forms the same way:

>Latin nouns having the nominative in *-us* or *-u,* and the genitive like the nominative, are said to be of the fourth declension...*

(*[A Comprehensive Medical Dictionary Containing the Pronunciation, Etymology, and Signification of the Terms made use of in Medicine and the Kindred Sciences][7],* by Joseph Thomas (1874), p. 669)

(Unfortunately, Thomas doesn't go into detail about the pronunciation of vowels in Latin words because, as he explains in the preface, in his time as in ours there was no consensus about how to pronounce the vowels of Latin words being used in English contexts.)

Of course, modern doctors generally don't possess any special expertise in the fields of Latin or English pronunciation, so you'll have to decide for yourself how much weight to give to this evidence.

The contemporary usage guide writer [Bryan Garner][8] wrote the following passage, which seems to imply to me that he thinks of the plural of such words as being pronounced the same as the singular (although I don't know how deeply he pondered the matter, or considered his wording—maybe "form" is only meant to refer to the written form of the word):

> **nexus.** The acceptable plural forms are *nexuses* (English) and *nexus* (Latin). Naturally, the English form is preferable—e.g.: "The *nexuses* of activity for both rooms are the counters where the marijuana is dispensed." Glenn Martin, "The Tokin' Joint," *S.F. Chron.,* 24 Aug. 1997, at Z1. Some writers have betrayed their ignorance of Latin by writing \**nexi,* as if it were a second-declension noun. (Actually, because *nexus* is a fourth-declension noun, **it doesn't change its form in the plural**.) 

So this is another hypothetical pronunciation, but with some indirect evidence of possible use.

##Pronunciation of the vowel in the first syllable

It may seem like the vowel in the first syllable would naturally be the same in the plural as in the singular, but this is not something that is absolutely necessary in principle: we do see vowel changes in the first syllable of the plurals of a few words from Latin, such as *genus, genera,* the anatomical terms *vas, vasa,* and (for some speakers) *opus, opera.*

And there is actually a relevant rule that could potentially lead to this complication for *status.* First, however, I will discuss the vowel in the singular, which is also variable in pronunciation.

###Singular
As mentioned in the "Background" section above, the *Latin* pronunciation of the singular is thought to have been something like [ˈstatus] or [ˈstatʊs].

In English, the pronunciation of the singular form of *status* is always anglicized to a large degree (for example, the second vowel is always reduced to schwa), but there are different ways this can occur. There are two main variants:

- “STATE-us”, phonemic transcription: /ˈsteɪtəs/, phonetic transcriptions of some common pronunciations in various accents: [ˈsteɪtəs], [ˈsteɪɾəs]
- “STAT-us”, phonemic transcription: /ˈstætəs/, phonetic transcriptions of some common pronunciations in various accents: [ˈstætəs], [ˈstæɾəs], [ˈstatəs]. According to the [American Heritage Dictionary][9], this has somewhat recently become the most commonly preferred pronunciation in the United States (their 1997 survey was the first to show this preference).

It is possible that some people use /ɑ/ (compare "[data][10]") but I would say that this is certainly not a major variant.

The use of /eɪ/ in the singular is in accordance with the general rule that a vowel letter in an orthographically "open", stressed penult syllable is pronounced long in English, regardless of its quantity in Latin.

###Plural

Presumably, people who use /æ/ or /ɑ/ in the singular use the same vowel in the plural form.

The Oxford English Dictionary explicitly indicates a plural form with /eɪ/, /ˈsteɪtjuːs/, but there is actually a certain subtle irregularity to this pronunciation that could be considered problematic to a prescriptivist orthoepist. The rule for lengthening vowels in open syllables has an exception for words where a traditionally-pronounced "long u" is in the following syllable (some examples: *stature, solute, volume, tribute*). Now, there are in turn known exceptions to this exception (such as *nature*), but it might be considered preferrable to minimize their number.

And for example, if someone already is accustomed to pronouncing "[in situ][11]" as /ɪn ˈsɪtʃuː/ or "[genu][12]" as /ˈdʒɛnjuː/, then using a plural form "status" that is pronounced /ˈsteɪtjuːs/ introduces a certain inconsistency to the overall set of that person's pronunciations (or adds to that inconsistency, if it is already present).

#Words that inflect similarly
Some other English words that inflected in the same way as *status* in Latin are
*apparatus, coitus, fetus, flatus, hiatus, impetus, meatus, nexus.*


  [1]: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/status
  [2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/status
  [3]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/877/what-is-the-plural-form-of-status/317567#317567
  [4]: https://books.google.com/books?id=AvmzBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA852&lpg=PA852&dq=pronunciation%20plural%20Latin%20fourth%20declension&source=bl&ots=gIA8J_mqyk&sig=t3DU9NlRjcdgFhqMTaCJ6ov2qmc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij4rXr1c_UAhUEw4MKHYfJAOQ4ChDoAQg8MAU#v=onepage&q=pronunciation%20plural%20Latin%20fourth%20declension&f=false
  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_consonant_clusters#Yod-coalescence
  [6]: https://books.google.com/books?id=VqG0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=pronunciation%20plural%20Latin%20fourth%20declension&source=bl&ots=yhOkXcHcwV&sig=vn3R3vizGVZnXxct0tQ4_5j7YX4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij4rXr1c_UAhUEw4MKHYfJAOQ4ChDoAQglMAA#v=onepage&q=pronunciation%20plural%20Latin%20fourth%20declension&f=false
  [7]: https://books.google.com/books?id=CXQOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA669&lpg=PA669&dq=pronunciation%20plural%20Latin%20fourth%20declension&source=bl&ots=JPfnasJXi9&sig=bHN2lz43PDsdftG-UintO6J6uG0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7pueU08_UAhWjz4MKHZDXDcAQ6AEIWDAI#v=onepage&q=pronunciation%20plural%20Latin%20fourth%20declension&f=false
  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_A._Garner
  [9]: https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=status
  [10]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10155/data-pronunciation-dayta-or-dahta
  [11]: https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=in%20situ
  [12]: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/genu