Re: Intelligentsia? Re: Adopting a plural

On Thursday, October 14, 2004, at 04:28 , Alexander Savenkov wrote:

> Hello,
>
> 2004-10-14T10:42:47+03:00 Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
[snip]
>> The Russian word is taken from the Latin 1st. dec. feminine noun
>> _intelligentia_ which, I believe, is normally pronounced in the Slav
>> countries as /inteli'gentsia/.
>
> Bad guess. There are too many words in Russian ending with '-tsia',
> that doesn't mean they're taken from the Latin directly. The root of
> the word on the other hand is obviously borrowed.
No, no - it is bot a bad guess. It cannot be so because it is not a guess.
  If I was guessing, I would have said so.

I was reporting the information given in my dictionary, as I said. I quote
from  Chambers English Dictionary (1988 reprint):
"[Russ. -- L. _intelligentia_]"

Neither the dictionary nor I claimed that all words ending in -tsia in
Russian come from Latin. They certainly do not. the dictionary is merely
making a claim for this _one_ word. If the dictionary is in error, it
would be helpful if you explained why.

The second part of my sentence that you quote above concerns a _belief_,
not a guess. I explicitly said "I believe". I believe that in the
conventional pronunciation of Latin in Slav speaking countries the Latin
word _intelligentia_ is usually pronounced /inteli'gentsia/. That belief
is founded on information I had from a Bulgarian linguist; the information
may of course be wrong or I may have misunderstood it. How would a Russian
scholar pronounce the *Latin* word _intelligentia_ ?

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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