Learn English – “Stadiums” vs. “stadia”

I'm not that old, but when I was a child/teen, stadia was the common term. As in:

Wembley, the Nou Camp, and the Santiago Bernabeu are football stadia.

The MCG and Lord's are cricket stadia.

But now stadiums is the more common term. Is this shift essentially redundant? I've read some sources say that it better reflects English language pluralisation, but then I think "so what?" Stadia better reflects the Latin root, and English isn't a wholly logical/systematic language (very few languages are). If we call more than one dog dogs, more than one ox oxen, and use cattle both as singular and plural, then why does it matter?

Best Answer

The increase in use of stadiums as plural instead of stadia is probably also due to the fact that stadia has also other meanings unrelated to stadium:

Stadia, Stadium: Ngram:

Both stadia and stadiums are accepted plurals of stadium. Neither is right or wrong, but stadiums is far more common. This is the case throughout the English-speaking world, and it has been for several decades.

English-speakers are not required to know the rules of Latin grammar, and most Latin-derived words with long histories in English are now pluralized in the English manner. We do still prefer some Latin plurals by convention, however, but stadia is not one of them. Besides, stadia has its own meanings unrelated to stadium (i.e., a telescopic instrument used to measure distances, plus several related definitions), so keeping it separate might be useful.

(grammarist.com)