Re: TEST,delete:

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 11:32 2/7/99 +0100, Miguel wrote:
> Test response: I found Miguel's use of the word "Ergodicity" remarkable.
>  To confirm its meaning, it was insufficient to consult a paperback
> dictionary of Science nor one on Physics....
> Brian

...
> I didn't know that Webster's dictionary could have such a word....
> Surely references therein will also that use of ergodicity.

>        Miguel A. Santos

I continue this thread (briefly) not only to reassure Miguel of his
continued presence, but also to remark on a circumstance of my childhood.

 It was considered a desirable feature of the instruction in languages
at the school I attended to cement one's knowledge of the languages one was
studying in vivo. To that end, I was dispatched to spend one Summer's recess
with a French family ( and of course, their son was to reciprocate.)

 It is a sobering experience to attempt to replicate an everyday
conversation using a fifty to one hundred thousand word vocabulary in terms
of a two or three thousand word alternate mental dictionary which is sure
to evoke titters at the rendering (with diphthongs etc) in the total
immersion environment of a strict
parent in loco.
   The most amusing response I could evoke was to do the continual
pause/search/match/pronounce routine involved, and come up with what
Americans sometimes call a 'Two-dollar' word.

It turns out that one can hope for the greatest comparibility in vocabulary
by selecting multisyllable words of Latin roots. These serve the purpose in
multiple Romance languages.

Ergodicity is such a word - of fairly recent coinage, I assume - that has
Latin roots. A web search soon finds plenty of didactic hits - it is a term
of physics art, after all. Here is a sample:

<http://www.plmsc.psu.edu/~www/matsc597c-1997/introduction/Lecture2/node3.ht
ml#SECTION0003200000000000000000>

I see that worthy statistical thermodynamics lecture notes of this kind
(due to Veytsman & Kotelyanskii) are proliferating on the web; a very, very
encouraging prospect for the esoteric-deprived.

Miguel's note serves two other purposes:
* a reminder that the term "Webster's dictionary" has now lost all
specificity where multiple publishers appropriate Noah's imprimatur.

*  "Surely references therein will also that use of ergodicity" is a
construction that easily reminds a native reader that it is missing a verb
(though it certainly contains a verb).
   Markers like this one signal the use of a second language - but it is
unwise
to suppose that slight inelegancies of this kind indicate anything about
the quality of argument contained in such notes. Attitudes in this respect
differ widely between the British (who have something of the religious
fervor of the French towards language) and the infinitely more
laissez-faire American approach to spelling and grammar.

Brian

brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK