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COULD CARE LESS, OR COULDN"T ?

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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Morocco
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Interesting. I just always thought that "I could care less." was the sarcastic way of saying "I couldn't care less."

Supposedly vs. supposably anyone? :lol:

Edited by jenn3539
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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: England
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Quote: Nizzy ....while we are on the topic of things that drive us nuts can I just say that I get soooooo peeved when I here someone say: Can I aks you a question? instead of 'ask'.

Or, when George Dubya says nucular ? ;) Neil.

Edited by saturn5man

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That drives me nuts too...

and I am the american..

My mother many moons ago told me that it was COULD'NT careless.

Trust me she was a grammer fanatic and she :yes: wouldn't let me live it down it if I didn't say it correctly!

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Or, when George Dubya says nucular ? ;) Neil.

Oddly enough, nuCUlar is in the dictionary.

Main Entry: nu·cle·ar

Pronunciation: 'nü-klE-&r, 'nyü-, ÷-ky&-l&r

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"In our attempt to make everybody happy, we make nobody happy. And we lose elections." - Democratic activist Janice Griffin

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while we are on the topic of things that drive us nuts can I just say that I get soooooo peeved when I here someone say: Can I aks you a question? instead of 'ask'.

That's a ghetto thing. word.

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies."

Senator Barack Obama
Senate Floor Speech on Public Debt
March 16, 2006



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Filed: Citizen (apr) Country: Brazil
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while we are on the topic of things that drive us nuts can I just say that I get soooooo peeved when I here someone say: Can I aks you a question? instead of 'ask'.

either way they ask it, i always piss them off by replying "you just did" :P

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What I find facinating is the way many Americans make a point out of discussing every language oddity. Like when you say PRO cess instead of Prawcess.. That will make a room light up with giggles.. HAHAHAHA

I find it fascinating that my hubster's family and friends are so interested in discussing what they believe to be MY language oddities... like, "you pronounce the "r" in STAR"...HAHAHA... well, yeah, since it's there, I don't drop it like you do and say STAH.

I think it runs both ways equally. I've been corrected and giggled at numerous times by people over t'pond for the way I say something... :yes:

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Americans also seem to have made a habit of saying 'Tri-antula' when the correct pronunciation is

'Tar-antula'. I dont know why but that drives me crazy! I just cant help but correct! :blush:

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Filed: Country: England
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while we are on the topic of things that drive us nuts can I just say that I get soooooo peeved when I here someone say: Can I aks you a question? instead of 'ask'.

That's a ghetto thing. word.

:yes::lol:

Americans also seem to have made a habit of saying 'Tri-antula' when the correct pronunciation is

'Tar-antula'. I dont know why but that drives me crazy! I just cant help but correct! :blush:

:huh: weird...I never heard that..LOL

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I think "congradulations" for "congratulations" is the one I see most frequently on VJ.

orientated instead of oriented

mute point instead of moot point

there's a lot of mute points here.....cause everyone is afraid to say them :P

* ~ * Charles * ~ *
 

I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.

 

USE THE REPORT BUTTON INSTEAD OF MESSAGING A MODERATOR!

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Filed: Country: England
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here you go Neil... by the way... Happy Yorkshire Day!!, which is today...heehee.

source...

From Leland Woodbury, New York; related questions came from Marc Schoenfeld in San Francisco and many others.: “Your discussion of the contradictory interpretations of cheap at half the price reminds me of a similar conundrum that keeps flustering me in comparing the phrases I couldn’t care less and I could care less, each of which (at least here in America) is used to mean the same thing (which is basically I really don’t care), even though their syntax suggests that they should be opposites.”

[A] The form I could care less has provoked a vast amount of comment and criticism in the past thirty years or so. Few people have had a kind word for it, and many have been vehemently opposed to it (William and Mary Morris, for example, in the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage, back in 1975, called it “an ignorant debasement of language”, which seems much too powerful a condemnation). Writers are less inclined to abuse it these days, perhaps because Americans have had time to get used to it.

A bit of history first: the original expression, of course, was I couldn’t care less, meaning “it is impossible for me to have less interest or concern in this matter, since I am already utterly indifferent”. It is originally British. The first record of it in print I know of is in 1946, as the title of a book by Anthony Phelps, recording his experiences in Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II. By then it had clearly become sufficiently well known that he could rely on its being recognised. It seems to have reached the US some time in the 1950s and to have become popular in the latter part of that decade. The inverted form I could care less was coined in the US and is found only there. It may have begun to be used in the early 1960s, though it turns up in a written form only in 1966.

Why it lost its negative has been much discussed. It’s clear that the process is different from the shift in meaning that took place with cheap at half the price. In that case, the inversion was due to a mistaken interpretation of its meaning, as has happened, for example, with beg the question.

In these cases people have tried to apply logic, and it has failed them. Attempts to be logical about I could care less also fail. Taken literally, if one could care less, then one must care at least a little, which is obviously the opposite of what is meant. It is so clearly logical nonsense that to condemn it for being so (as some commentators have done) misses the point. The intent is obviously sarcastic—the speaker is really saying, “As if there was something in the world that I care less about”.

However, this doesn’t explain how it came about in the first place. Something caused the negative to vanish even while the original form of the expression was still very much in vogue and available for comparison. Stephen Pinker, in The Language Instinct, points out that the pattern of intonation in the two versions is very different.

There’s a close link between the stress pattern of I could care less and the kind that appears in certain sarcastic or self-deprecatory phrases that are associated with the Yiddish heritage and (especially) New York Jewish speech. Perhaps the best known is I should be so lucky!, in which the real sense is often “I have no hope of being so lucky”, a closely similar stress pattern with the same sarcastic inversion of meaning. There’s no evidence to suggest that I could care less came directly from Yiddish, but the similarity is suggestive. There are other American expressions that have a similar sarcastic inversion of apparent sense, such as Tell me about it!, which usually means “Don’t tell me about it, because I know all about it already”. These may come from similar sources.

So it’s actually a very interesting linguistic development. But it is still regarded as slangy, and also has some social class stigma attached. And because it is hard to be sarcastic in writing, it loses its force when put on paper and just ends up looking stupid. In such cases, the older form, while still rather colloquial, at least will communicate your meaning—at least to those who really could care less.

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I think "congradulations" for "congratulations" is the one I see most frequently on VJ.

orientated instead of oriented

mute point instead of moot point

I was 'orientated' in a massage parlor in Bangkok.

A big one for me is 'alzheimer's'. People say 'old-timers' or 'alt-timers'.

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies."

Senator Barack Obama
Senate Floor Speech on Public Debt
March 16, 2006



barack-cowboy-hat.jpg
90f.JPG

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