Help: synonym for 'monitorable'

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Lilalena, May 5, 2013.

  1. Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    Oversee is another good word, thanks!

    I think "The electoral system should lend itself to effective monitoring" is the best solution (for me). I agree that efficiency and precision are important, but I also appreciate the tones or musicality or aesthetic side of the English language (Frag, you would know what the actual term is) and the ideal thing is when all these coincide in a sentence.
     
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  3. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    "Checkable" is slightly better I think, but "monitorable" is OK too.
     
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  5. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    OK, I can understand that . So what if I substitute by appropriate individuals instead?
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    That's just too subjective. No two people are going to have the same reaction to that aspect of a language.

    Sure, over the decades good writers have discovered a few tricks that usually work, like the tricolon. (A monosyllable --> a polysyllable --> a phrase, e.g., "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) But you can't just sit down and create a new one.

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    Huh? "Monitor" has a much more specific meaning than "check." To check an election could mean simply to look at the next day's newspaper and see if it was held.

    I don't understand what's wrong with "monitorable." Why are you all jumping through these outlandish hoops to avoid it? It's clear, concise and specific. Communication at its finest! It's like you're so accustomed to government writing (never settle for one page if you can do it in twenty so it costs more and takes longer) that you're uncomfortable with something that's simple and direct.

    I'm an editor and of all the suggestions you've provided, this is the one I'd go with.
     
  8. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    We never said that "monitorable" was a bad word or a wrong word, we were only asked for more ways to say the same thing.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Yes, that is your position and I respect it. Nothing wrong with an interesting discussion.

    But some of these posts imply, or say outright, that "monitorable" simply isn't good enough to fulfill the purpose, but they don't seem to make the point very well, if at all.
     
  10. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    It's no use, we are just going to have to settle for monitorable.
     
  11. Lilalena Registered Senior Member

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    This is funny. And actually, you're right, but then again,

    He's right, too.

    About this, however:

    You're being disingenuous. I mean, it's just as natural to allow language to evolve in whatever direction, as to feel a need to protect it in instances where it's getting diluted, misused etc. Of course the perception that it's being misused is subjective, all I'm saying is the reaction to 'protect' it or to strive for / learn about proper usage is natural. It's got nothing to do with government writing.

    Recently people have reacted to corporate gobbledegook like "going forward" seeping into everyday language and (in my opinion) they're right to do so. I've encountered (OK I shouldn't have been so irritated) an instance of the word 'squalidity' where squalor would have done, being used over and over in the same article, and this was in The Guardian, one of the leading newspapers in London (or the UK?). As an editor, how would *you* have reacted?

    Then (OK this is pretty minor again but I mean there are loads of minor instances, it's like...a million papercuts....) there's the fact that the sign over the tills at Marks & Spencer that used to read "12 items or fewer" now reads "12 items or less." I mean, I don't think it's pure snobbery to appreciate that English makes a distinction between countables and uncountables--it suggests that this is a flexible, subtle language. Sure, most of us do use 'less' regardless but, going back to this particular example, since every other supermarket uses 'less' as a matter of course, it made me smile that M&S were seemingly making this last stand for good usage. Now, of course, they've given up. It depresses me. So there's a nostalgia component to my reaction that's definitely subjective but it's not worthless since I'm sure other people feel it too.

    I think that your argument that my reaction to 'monitorable' (the word is growing on me by the way) is subjective and therefore worthless is flawed since language evolves subjectively and arbitrarily anyway and our reactions here count towards that evolution, too. The worst part is it's ridiculous that I care so much since I'm not a native speaker and may only be feeling bitter over the pages' worth of exercises I had to do as a kid in that English workbook, just on the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer'.
     
  12. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Don't get Fraggle started on that one.

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    As for someone saying "squalidity", I don't know how you remained merely irritated.
    It makes me feel like someone has disembowelled me, and is stamping on my guts.
     
  13. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Synonym for 'monitorable'?

    'East Korean'.
     
  14. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Do you find this annoying:
    You find something useful by accident.
    "That's very serendippity"
     
  15. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    East Korean

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  16. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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  17. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't realise it existed.
    But if it's on wiki....................

    It lacks a Principality.

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  18. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    Todays American Congress allows bills they write to be counted not by the pages in them but how much they weigh!
     
  19. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Good Point.
     
  20. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    GeoffP City.
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Ya think?

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    Sure. But so is the urge to adapt and expand it.

    In the U.S. there is a significant backlash against the rhetoric of government documents and speeches. You'd almost think that they're deliberately trying to keep us from understanding what they're really going to do--or in most cases more likely what they're NOT going to do. But oh no, they would never do that.

    Major corporations undergo the same transition that the U.S. government has: becoming analogs of organisms. As they grow bigger they become slower-moving, less efficient, more preoccupied with their own internal metabolism, and less likely to react to external stimuli. So they've adopted the same tactics, such as obfuscatory language.

    The hapless employees react by playing "Bullshit Bingo." It's not actually laid out in a 5x5 grid like real bingo, but when an attendee at a staff meeting logs the utterance of five of these meaningless phrases, he yells "Bingo!"

    Actually I see a distinction between "squalor" and "squalidity." Squalor is actual dirt and filth. A place that is full of dirt and filth, from neglect, poverty, etc. is squalid, also used more generally as a synonym for wretched, miserable, degraded, sordid. Squalidity is the condition of being dirty, filthy, neglected, wretched, miserable, degraded and/or sordid. It's not the actual dirt and filth. In fact the referent may have no dirt and filth, merely be poorly administered, underfunded, or staffed by morons.

    You could refer to a government program as squalid without implying that its offices are littered with feces and teeming with cockroaches.

    How amusing. In the USA they always said "15 items or less" and only recently have the stores bowed to the complaints of the educated minority and reprinted them with the word "fewer." -- Edit: I see that the same is true over there.

    The major impact of the countable vs. mass noun is in the presence or absence of an article, and all native speakers get that right--even such subtleties as "mammals breathe air" versus "the air in New Mexico is really dry." It's one of the little obstacles that trip up foreigners.

    Very few people think about their language consciously.

    I don't remember writing those exact words. I hope I wasn't quite so insulting.

    You could have fooled me. What was your first language? Obviously you studied English during that early window when it's possible to learn a second language perfectly. This is why I urge the teaching of foreign languages in the early grades.
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    People here say "serendipitous."
     
  23. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    America is inherently a very serendipacious nation.
    It was accidentally discovered by Columbus while he was looking for somewhere else entirely.
    Possibly Sri Lanka.
     

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