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I was with him until he said "I could care less". Couldn't damnit, could not. This irks me to no end. </grammar nazi>
by run4yourlives 17y ago
I was with him until he said "I could care less".
Couldn't damnit, could not. This irks me to no end.
</grammar nazi>
- DannoHung 17y agoI've always thought that could be a clever turn of phrase, like, "Well, I could care less, but that would actually require effort." Like, utter and complete apathy, even unto apathy for the apathy.
- mcantor 17y agoI commend you, good sir, and assert that you are no grammar nazi. A nazi is crude, unreasonable and thoughtless. You are none of these things. You have merely demanded a minimum amount of effort from the people around you, an infinitesimal moment spent in quiet reflection that could perhaps result in a magical epiphany resembling, "Wait a minute, if I could care less, that means I am caring more than the minimum! That is not what I am trying to express! Alack, I must duly backspace." Edit: And to whoever downvoted this man, I officially call you a knave.
- thismat 17y agoSpot on sir. I up voted the both of you as this is a huge irk or mine as well. Say what you mean, don't just rehash phrases you've heard before! This says a lot about how much thought we put into what we're saying and hearing, as I've seen and heard this on all types of media, from TV, movies, radio, books...
- redorb 17y agoI'll bite: I couldn't care less about anyones irk's - You get the point of what he was trying to say .... so why point out the difference? - I think its a smug ass hole thing to do. edit: This comment also puts me in that category.
- mcantor 17y agoI upvoted you because it is a smug, asinine thing to do, but I disagree with your implication that he thus should not have done it. However, because this is One Of Those Issues, I have split my reply into two conceptual sections: Objective: It seems that the world is largely organized into two classes of people: those who care about precision of speech beyond the simple need for making someone else understand your point, and those who believe that as long as everyone is on the same page, then for God's sake, it bears no further discussion. "I could care less" apologists are in the latter group, clearly, but it is important for both groups to exist and speak up. Of course, this means that while I disagree that he shouldn't have mentioned it, I agree that you should have criticised him for mentioning it. Subjective: My disgust with "I could care less" goes beyond mere imprecision of speech. There are people in this HN thread claiming that when someone says "I could care less," they mean "I could care less, but it would require effort." I think that this is definitely not what most people think they are saying when they say "I could care less." I think most people are trying to express, "I couldn't care less even if I tried," but are failing to express that because they are simply regurgitating things they have already heard. This is a pernicious habit indicative of a deeper lack of thoughtfulness and creativity in our society, and it drives me completely crazy.
- redorb 17y agowhat a diplomat (seriously) - thanks for your analysis I can now see the other side a bit easier.
- thismat 17y agoI don't point this out to people for the reason stated. It does irk me, but I keep my peace, even when it's my own brother. That being said, this is a forum that is detailed and critical by nature, I don't feel it's smug to voice a subjective opinion on the matter. Still, you're right, it can be(and most likely is in most situations), a very rude and smug thing to do, but it all depends on the person as well. Do they receive critical comments well? Will they be enlightened because of it?
- dirkstoop 17y ago
- Periodic 17y agoThis has always been my understanding. Why would I state that I could care less about something which I am trying to express that I don't care much about at all? There's the theory that it implies you could care less, but that would require effort. I don't buy it. It's pretty easy not to care about something, in fact, I think it takes no effort at all. It's not like I'm straining myself by not caring about Joe Smith's new job in northern Minnesota. In fact, I couldn't care less.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- hughprime 17y agoIn fact, starting now I think I'm going to start using "I could care less" liberally to communicate its literal meaning. Frinstance: "My car broke down, and I could care less!" "I broke my finger, and I could care less!" "My girlfriend left me for being so goddamn pedantic all the time, and I could care less!"
- camccann 17y ago"My girlfriend left me for being so goddamn pedantic all the time, and I could care less!" I wonder if there's an opportunity to be had in creating a dating site for linguistic pedants, purists, and grammar nazis. I'm thinking a required literacy test to join, and auto-banning the account of anyone who commits more than some threshold limit of grammatical errors. </probably joking>
- hughprime 17y agoThe personal ads in the London Review of Books might fit your needs. I was browsing the book mentioned in this article last week: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6592990 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6592990
- TrevorJ 17y agoI think the key metric is that useful grammatical suggestions are ones that make the communication more clear. At the end of the day, clarity should be the focus. It bothers me when people make silly grammatical errors, but many of them end up in the final text because our minds auto-correct for them and as such they rarely pose much of a problem in terms of actual clarity.
- jwhite 17y agoI agree with you. The reason such errors worry me, even if clarity isn't an issue, is that the next generation reads these incorrect texts and assumes that everything they read was written correctly. As a consequence these kids misunderstand the grammar of their language. Lack of formal grammar training doesn't help. Because language is an important tool for thinking, degraded language skills lead to degraded thinking. The example that always gets me foaming at the mouth is the persistent confusion of "are" and "our" in online forums, just because they sound similar in an American accent.
- noonespecial 17y agoIt is important to write correctly. If you allow "I could care less" to congeal on top of "I couldn't care less" in one big idiomatic mess, you more or less lose the ability to express "I could care less". A more extreme example that also bothers me to no end is "begs the question." Its now quite impossible to use this phrase to call out the logic error to which it originally referred as it is now used interchangeably with "raises the question". When I want to call the error, I have to do a mini exposition on circular reasoning. I feel cheated out of this fine piece of language. There's a difference between nazism and simply insisting on correctness. I also commend.
- nooloop 17y agoI find that the form, "begging the question", still gets the point across.
- jmmcd 17y agoIt gets a different point across.
- alex_c 17y agoThat's because the correct meaning of "begging the question" is completely non-intuitive. I challenge anyone to give me a good explanation of how the meaning of the term is in any way related to the meaning of the English words "begging the question", other than "well, that's what the Latin term translates to." I'm bothered by people who say "could care less", but I'm bothered even more by people who insist on "correcting" use of the phrase "begging the question". This begs the question, am I a hypocrite?
- Confusion 17y agoNo, you're not a hypocrite, but you are being inconsistent. That's not necessarily a bad thing, unless it leads to hypocrisy. There's a fine line between defending a point of view and defending it in such a way that you really can't reasonably defend the opposite point of view anymore.
- 17y ago
- alnayyir 17y agoI love you both.
- idlewords 17y ago"I could care less" is sarcasm that has fossilized into idiom. Notice how it has a different intonation than you would expect from a simple declarative statement.
- khafra 17y agoIndeed--parts of speech up to entire subjects or objects may be omitted where they're understood from context. Here, it's obvious that the full, time-worn phrase is "I could try to care less, but I might strain something."
- pohl 17y agoI don't buy that theory. I'm fairly sensitive to intonation, and have never heard it intoned in the manner you suggest. I think it's more likely that people parrot the sounds without thinking of the words and/or the meaning. Compare to "for all intensive purposes", for example.
- thras 17y agoMaybe it's regional. Regardless, Stephen Pinker discusses the intonation of "could care less" in The Language Instinct.
- aristoxenus 17y ago"I couldn't care less" is the literal way to state the sentiment, but it sounds weak and petulant compared to the idiom. There are multiple intonations that could potentially achieve the sarcastic effect, but the common one is just a flat dismissive delivery. I agree with your observation of that common mechanism for mangling English, though. The mis-quote you mention is particularly embarrassing to behold.
- mr_justin 17y agoThat's fine if you don't buy it, but it still seems to be an accepted idiom.
- Radix 17y agoSomehow I hadn't noticed 'intensive purposes', so thanks. Recently I have found the use of 'practically' as a replacement for 'pretty much' irksome. We have plenty of words for that and no more to indicate 'for practical purposes'. As others have pointed out: language is meant to be understood. It would be enough to always take the meaning from a speaker, except if we do that chronically, we begin to lose words. Which will make communication more difficult when you need those specialized meanings. Bother.
- lanstein 17y agotag parse error
- WilliamLP 17y agoYou could be more anal about this issue.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- coconutrandom 17y agoHe COULD care less. But instead he cared just enough to go on for several paragraphs. I could care less that this irks you (but I care enough to hit reply).
- calambrac 17y agoWhile we're being pedantic assholes: I was with him until he said, "I could care less." Couldn't, dammit, COULD NOT. This irks me to no end. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/ http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=damnit http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=damnit http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dammit http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dammit
- run4yourlives 17y agoTouché. I won't grant you that first comma in the second sentence, however. Superfluous, really.
- calambrac 17y agoIgnoring that it's not actually a sentence: 3. Use a pair of commas in the middle of a sentence to set off clauses, phrases, and words that are not essential to the meaning of the sentence. Use one comma before to indicate the beginning of the pause and one at the end to indicate the end of the pause. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/
- camccann 17y agoMore quibbling: The period inside the quotation marks isn't clear-cut. Standard American usage is punctuation inside the quotations and is a hold-over from practical considerations of typesetting. Standard British usage is punctuation inside only if part of the quotation itself, outside otherwise. The British style also sees some use in scientific and technical contexts even in the USA, due to being regarded as more logical. run4yourlives being a programmer as well as, apparently, Canadian, is perfectly entitled to use the more logical British style without regret or hesitation.
- calambrac 17y agoStandard British usage is punctuation inside only if part of the quotation itself The period is a part of the quotation itself.
- Pistos2 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescriptive_linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescriptive_linguistics For the record, I generally lament the "flattening" of language. However, I still find myself pulled by the current. Examples: I no longer care to avoid splitting infinitives; I say "could have went" now and then. Ultimately, we might suppose one need only concern oneself with two goals: (1) communicating what one intends to communicate, and (2) making a satisfactory impression upon others on account of one's speech/writing. Use "common" language to achieve the former; use "correct" language to achieve both.
- derefr 17y agoThe splitting of infinitives admonition was created, artificially, by a prescriptivist who had studied too much Latin and thought that languages ought to reflect their heritage. It wasn't a prevalent conception until the 1800s; Shakespeare even split infinitives (once.)
- Pistos2 17y agoThis Wikipedia article says there is only one case of Shakespeare splitting an infinitive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#Modern_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#Modern_English The same article seems to suggest that it has both come into and gone out of fashion over the last few centuries. I feel consoled by the examples given where avoiding the split would introduce potentially different meanings than the one originally intended.
- eru 17y agoWe do split infinitives all the time in German. Nobody has been harmed, yet.
- barry-cotter 17y agoUh huh. So sich erinerren ≡ zu sich erinneren? I'm guessing that it's a historical accident that "to" is demed part of the infinitive in English and "zu" isn't in German. Wart, meinst du die getrennte Verben? [Pedant] Mann braucht kein "do" in "We do split" [/Pedant]
- MaysonL 17y agoI could care less about this topic. [but the mental energy required to change my emotional response to your flame would be more than the subject is worth]
- lucifer 17y agoIt is grammatically correct. (Not that I could care less.)
- tvon 17y agoAmusingly enough, this one tidbit has been the primary subject of conversion this article has spawned, both here and on reddit.
- endtime 17y agoI lived in England until I was 7, and I grew up saying "couldn't care less". I'm American now, and it's always bugged me that the vast majority of Americans can't get that phrase right.
- keefe 17y agothis grammar error always amuses me - people that say I could care less generally not only could but SHOULD care less...