Re: Intelligentsia? Re: Adopting a plural

I sent this off this morning (Oct 15th) but it got sent only to Alexander
& not to the rest of you! So here it is again:
On Friday, October 15, 2004, at 05:26 , Alexander Savenkov wrote:

[snip]
> Ah, my apologies. You have a cool dictionary then. Because according
> to my source (Rossiyskiy entsiklopedicheskiy slovar, 2000) the word
> intelligentsiya comes from Latin _intelligens_, not intelligentia.
> That was the point of my objection.
And of course the Latin _intelligentia_ is also derived from _intelligens_
(<-- *intelligent+s).

> On the whole, I tend to trust Russian sources, especially when we talk
> about Russian language.
That's reasonable. It could well be an independent formation in Russian
from the Latin intelligent- . I guess the people responsible for Chambers
Dictionary were unduly influenced by the close similarity of
_intelligentsiya_ and _intelligentia_. (The English "intelligence" on the
other hand is derived from Latin _intelligentia_ through Old French.)

Ray
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