Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wylde]

i'm under the impression that americans say 'could care less' and british english speakers say couldn't care less..

i can't understand 'i could care less', it doesn't make sense... if you say 'i could care less' it means that you currently care about it...

if you say 'i couldn't care less' it means that you are already at the bottom of caring and you couldn't care about it any less...


snap out of it guys...

[Crois]

But but you always care about everything. If you dont care it means you dont know what it is.

[wylde]

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Then why are you talking about it?

[Universalis]

Steven Pinker wrote about this very question in his book The Language Instinct. It's been a while since I read it, so I forgot his exact argument, but he concluded that "I could care less" is perfectly acceptable.

Here it is:

A tin ear for prosody (stress and intonation) and an obliviousness to the principles of discourse and rhetoric are important tools of the trade for the language maven. Consider an alleged atrocity committed by today's youth: The expression _I could care less_. The teenagers are trying to express disdain, the adults note, in which case they should be saying _I couldn't care less_. If they could care less than they do, that means they really do care, the opposite of what they are trying to say. But if these dudes would stop ragging on teenagers and scope out the construction, they would see that their argument is bogus. Listen to how the two versions are pronounced:

COULDN'T care I
LE CARE
i ESS. LE
could ESS.

The melodies and stresses are completely different, and for a good reason. The second version is not illogical, it's _sarcastic_. The point of sarcasm is that by making an assertion that is manifestly false or accompanied by ostentatiously mannered intonation, one deliberately implies its opposite. A good paraphrase is, "Oh yeah, as if there was something in the world I could care less about."


From: http://www.urbanlegends.com/language/could_care_less.html

EDIT Part 2: Obviously, the little intonation chart he wrote out didn't get done right. But the key is the intonation... think about it.

[wylde]

[wylde]

[Toby]

[wylde]

[sadsac]

Wylde you are just trying to be obtuse. Where's your nursery by the way?

[wylde]

[J.B. Clamence]

I've always been under the impression that the expression should properly be "couldn't care less", although some people abbreviate it to "could care less", even though technically the meaning is different and it doesn't make much sense. It's kind of like how some Americans put a "---'s" at the name of any restaurant or store. For example: "We're going shooping at K-mart's." Just a habit I guess, even though it doesn't make much sense.

Anyway, I'm American, and I always say "couldn't care less". I try to speak properly as much as I can, but not everyone does. Having said that, I'm sure there are many expressions which are quite common in the commonwealth which, when analyzed from a logical standpoint, wouldn't make much sense at all, even when compared to expressions of similar meaning used in other English-speaking countries.

[jajdude]

That's a strange one.

Maybe "I could care less" is a bit sarcastic? Like, "I could care less if I cared enough to bother in the first place," or something like that, in which case it does mean about the same as "I couldn't care less."

Anyway meaning is defined by common usage even if it makes no literal sense.

How about "irregardless".?... nice, er,"word"

Or sometimes I remember people saying "unthaw"..... meaning "freeze"?
Nope, just not a word, but the meaning gets across anyway.

[wylde]

[Zed]

I thought there was a lengthy discussion about this here before. Has it been deleted?