Re: Intelligentsia? Re: Adopting a plural

Hello,

2004-10-14T10:42:47+03:00 Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> On Wednesday, October 13, 2004, at 05:30 , Rodlox wrote:
>>> Languages Dept. of the university where I work.
>>> On the reverse formation, Annie Dillard has a bright teenager coining
>>> "intelligentsium"
>>> (as singular from intelligentsia) as a term for herself, presumably the
>> only
>>> intelligent person in her community.
>>
>>  doesn't _intelligentsia_ or _intelligetsa_ (guessing at the spelling)
>> come
>> from Russian? *curious*
> _intelligentsia_ is the English spelling. Yes, it is taken from Russian.
> My dictionary says it may also be spelled _intelligentzia_ but I do not
> recall ever seeing that spelling. The dictionary also gives two
> pronunciations: either /IntElI'gEntsi@/ or /IntElI'dZEntsi@/. The former,
> I guess, would be used by those knowing its Russian origin, but IME it's
> almost invariably pronounced the second way.
My dictionary gives just one pronunciation. I'm not familiar with the
evil code you and other people use for the IPA signs on this list, but
I believe the pronunciation is similar to the second variant you
provided (with secondary stress however).

> 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.

...

Alexander
--
  Alexander Savenkov                            http://www.xmlhack.ru/
  savenkov@xmlhack.ru             http://www.xmlhack.ru/authors/croll/

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