Infinities Loop

In a bad mood?

:)

Awesome.....I've been pointing out that error for some time now...nice to see someone else feeling the same way! :)

At least it beats mines' (pronounced mine-ziz).

Example: Those are mines'

8^0

I would have thought it depended entirely upon the inflection you put upon "could"

Well, I feel the same way when I see someone type "10xs" on my instant messenger :)

Yes, I point this out to people every time I hear it from them. Usually I get a blank stare back because the person who said it really has no idea that what he just said was not really what he meant.

You're right, it's been accepted into the language now, along with "your" when someone means "you're" and rogue apostraphe usage. Oh, how I lament the decline in the correct application of the English language.

It's idiomatic - consider it as a contraction of a phrase like "yeah, like I could care less...", or "as though there was something I could care less about...".

At least, if that is the derivation (as suggested by Pinker), the phrase itself is now a standard idiom which should be no more objectionable than any other similar phrase.

I couldn't care less if people use the variant form "could care less".

Actually, this is a bug in *US* English language culture, not English language culture. British people always say, "I couldn't care less" as do, I suspect, most other English language speakers. Now, don't get me started on irksome phrases like, "Do the math..." and the like... :)

Pointing out putative errors in common usage is quixotic at best, roughly as effective as pointing out to young people the impracticality of their clothing style du jour -- trousers so baggy they have to be held up with one hand, shoes so tall that wearers regularly incur ankle injury, etc.

The idea that people use commonplace expressions incorrectly and that they should therefore pay attention and "get" them presupposes that people understand, or even listen to, every word that they say. Who can explain offhand what the following expressions mean and why we say them (and if we're saying them correctly)?

Have your cake and eat it, too.

The exception proves the rule.

She's the apple of my eye.

Let's talk turkey.

She flew off the handle.

Sure, there are people who make an effort to understand what these mean (and why), but that's a pretty small percentage of the people who say these things every day. Like Kevin says, "could care less" is idiomatic, which is a neutral way of saying "we can't explain why people say it this way."

People pick up expressions the way they picked up language in the first place -- by copying what they hear from other people. Not so many people stop and examine the logic (semantic or grammatical) of what they utter. (Else why would people say "He gave it to my brother and I"?, which they've been doing for at least 400 years.)

FWIW, I think Pinker's attempt to explain this -- that it started as an ironic usage -- is a heck of a stretch. Sometimes people just get things a little wrong, and for some reason, that usage prevails.

Incidentally, Lauren Squires has an interesting post on "the social life of prescriptivism," basically the sociology of language attitudes:

http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2007/03/21/the-social-life-of-prescriptivism/

Quite interesting.

PS I posit a rule -- let's call it Mike's Proposition About Degenerating Language Discussions, conveniently ambiguous -- that one cannot point out a usage issue without someone noting that people are ruining the language. So far, I'm scoring right around 100%. :-)

Humans certainly are (AFAWK) uniquely able to infer rich structure from comparatively paltry information. In fact, they seem compelled to do so, witness <insert wackiest conspiracy theory you know of here>. The goal of Pinker et al -- who's a psychologist -- is to understand how that happens, both the software and the hardware. (There was an interesting post recently by Anil Dash that noted that the language of lolcats, which is still in the process of invention, has enough of a grammar already that, as he says, it's possible to get it wrong -- http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/23/cats_can_has_gr.)

As for the million little pieces that must be necrotic by now :-) it might help to think of English as expanding, ie, its rules set just keeps getting richer and richer. So many more interesting tools to work with every day! Texting, lolcats, ... man.

Anyway, go read some _bad_ Victorian prose and you'll be happy that we've moved on, haha.

Re: "could care less" vs "couldn't care less". My understanding is that the correct phrase is the first (though when you say it, you think, "Huh?"), since the original phrase was "I could care less than nothing". Once the last two words were lost, it didn't make sense, so we all started saying, "Couldn't care less."

That was the story I got, anyway :-).

Ixx

What about words becomming an antonym of themselves through decades or centuries of misuse?

Anxious:

1. characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency

3. ardently or earnestly wishing.

Peruse:

1 a : to examine or consider with attention and in detail : STUDY b : to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner

2 : READ; especially : to read over in an attentive or leisurely manner

you guys needs to get out a little more

Tell me about it...

(which of course means: please don't tell me about it, I already know all about it.)

Thinking about the "Degenerating Language" issue, is this why we in the US have started using phrases such as, "He is like me" instead of "He is like I" which is short for the correct English; "He is like I am"

Also, does this explain the "Whome do I ask" being changed to "Who do I ask" etc.  I grew up outside the US, so now I'm confused a little.  

Or should I care less...

Thanks for the Viewstate article by the way.

"I could care less" works just fine so long as you say it in a sufficiently sarcastic manner.

I disagree with this. "I couldn't care less" could both mean that you cannot possibly care any less because you already do not care at all, but it could also mean that something is so important to you that you could not possibly care any less than you do because it means too much and you care so much about it. And "I could care less" can mean that you care but you could care less, or it could mean i have such little care for something, but it is so unimportant that I could care even less than I do.

you could always cox manner...

oh my god! i care so little i almost passed out

I love this blog! It's funny!

I couldn't agree more with this topic.. it has annoyed me for years that people say "I could care less" when they actually mean "I couldn't care less".