Vocabulary Challenges Anyone?

[Montero]

Just re-reading Earth Made of Glass by John Barnes. It is the second in the "Thousand Cultures" series. Part of the background is that when mankind left Earth to colonise other planets, there was a lot of specific culture colonies. Some many to one planet, others getting a planet to themselves. The cultures varied between ethnic, religious, a founding principle and invented. (The first book, A Million Open Doors starts in a culture based on what the troubadour culture was thought to be like.)

So the vocabulary challenge that just stopped me in my tracks and sent me to the dictionary was

"...no one had thought that the different cultures would ever want, or need, or have much contact with each other, even on the eight planets that had more than a hundred cultures each. In that era of formalization and intensification, it had been thought that all cultures would want to develop separately, each in its own isosemiotic episteme."

So wandering through the Concise Oxford dictionary didn't find an exact match, online dictionaries gave:

semiotic of or pertaining to signs.

episteme a system of understanding or a body of ideas which give shape to the knowledge of that time

So that seems to be, having a body of ideas involving the same signs, or each culture will have its own unique way of doing things.

I thought that was fun. Wouldn't want a brain teaser like that on every page, but now and then is interesting. So having just read it, felt like sharing it.

Anyone else got examples of lesser used words they've come across?

 

[Ursa major]

Don't forget the prefix, iso, which is often used to mean "equal": isobar (a line on a map that joins points of equal atmospheric pressure); isocracy (a system of government where all have equal political power); isolate (an operating characteristic of some railways/railroads); Isobel (a person who's equally loud wherever they are).


So I presume that the stated thought that cultures would keep themselves to themselves was shown to be wrong, presumably because some of them were keen to show, demonstrate (or worse) that their way of doing things was better (or should be universal), rather than having equal validity.

 

[Montero]

Don't forget the prefix, iso, which is often used to mean "equal": isobar (a line on a map that joins points of equal atmospheric pressure); isocracy (a system of government where all have equal political power); isolate (an operating characteristic of some railways/railroads); Isobel (a person who's equally loud wherever they are).


So I presume that the stated thought that cultures would keep themselves to themselves was shown to be wrong, presumably because some of them were keen to show, demonstrate (or worse) that their way of doing things was better (or should be universal), rather than having equal validity.

I hadn't forgotten the iso - I had it as "the same". However I see from what you've said I hadn't quite understood what JB was saying. So the "isosemiotic" bit, is not that all the symbols within one culture are the same/have the same root, but that the original theory was that all the cultures would have the same/equal "pressure" on each other hence each culture is naturally self separating.

And I like your interpretation of Isobel and isolate.

 

[hitmouse]

That's nuncipatory.

 

[hitmouse]

"That's nuncipatory," he said with punctilio.