Attempting to fossilize or codify a language beyond the boundaries native speakers naturally set is simply not possible. That you use verbs like allow and devolve insinuates a fundamental misunderstanding about what is in control here. You and I cannot do anything really. It is the language in aggregate that decides and that beast can be rode but not tamed.
Now we’re getting somewhere! This strikes me as the best explanation I’ve seen so far; thanks!
Yeah, I’m not really sure what you expect to be done. I’m an English major, worked as a copy editor for a spell (AP Style), and know Standard American English or whatever you want to call the prestige dialect pretty well. But I use forms like “could care less,” “literally,” double negatives, redundant prepositions (“Where you at?”), etc. because those are idiomatic in my dialect. I can’t see any amount of rules changing that. We were all taught through twelve years of Catholic grammar and high school that “ain’t” isn’t a word and not to use the permissive “can,” but rather “may,” among many, many other “rules.” Did that make one whit of difference to any of us in our day-to-day language? Pretty much, no.
<_<
this actually kind of proves your point though
I’m not seeing your point. When pulykamell talks about “rules” teachers promulgate in school, he really means the conventions that are enforced because it’s far easier - and admittedly much more sensible - to lay down right/wrong “rules” to children just learning how to use the language, rather than confusing them with the endless nuance of real language that we’re arguing about here.
I have a rule of thumb that whatever anyone brings up what their English teacher said about language will be wrong. It works in almost every case. Their simplifications are no different than those in Strunk & White. Language buffs love to point out its errors and contradictions an failures to follow its own advice. But if you need that kind of help, that kind of help is well nigh perfect. A teacher can say “don’t use could care less in an assignment” and be completely justified. But that advice is silly and meaningless in the real world where people know what they mean to say and how to say it. And usage does not have “rules” similar to grammar.
I may be having a brain fart, but I’m assuming you are pointing out either an incorrect or colloquial usage of the word “number” there? I don’t see anything non-standard there.
Point taken. However, so far we have at least three competing explanations for the apparent “incorrect” version of “couldn’t care less”, so etymology isn’t getting us anywhere.
The problem is, as I point out below, that since the phrase carries a clear meaning as it stands, it doesn’t invite us to supply such modifiers.
Sure language can be degraded. This is why we teach grammar, spelling, semantics and rules of usage to school kids. Sure those rules can be bent and broken by writers who know what they’re doing, but they’re an essential baseline for those who don’t. I’ll say again that I think it’s telling that those who have condemned so-called “prescriptivists” are in fact good and careful writers themselves who clearly know the rules and almost always follow them.
Except that the example you cite is subtly but significantly different. It isn’t an idiom that is an exact converse of some other, but rather, one that is obviously incomplete and the reader is inclined to either re-interpret it as something like “as if I give a damn” or supply a concluding phrase, as in “I could give a damn, but I don’t”.
An exact converse would be saying “I give a damn” when you really mean “I don’t give a damn”. That’s the case with “couldn’t care less” turning into “could care less”. One might try to rationalize it by saying that there’s some implied preceding or following phrase that changes its meaning, but it doesn’t demand such a phrase because it carries a meaning just as it stands, and the meaning it carries is the exact opposite of the intended one. To me, that’s as jarring as someone hitting a completely wrong musical note.
You missed the point. The origin of “O.K.” is something that can be factually demonstrated. But this nonsense about there being some sort of subtle change in intonation or body language or whatever that somehow transforms the phrase “I could care less” into some sort of heretofore unheard of sarcasm where one does not say the opposite of one’s intended meaning, but rather a strangely watered down version of one’s intended meaning, that is 100% conjecture, but takes practically an entire essay to explain, is extremely suspect. Given that we have a simpler explanation, i.e. the usage began as a simple mistake, Occam’s Razor most certainly does apply.
That doesn’t make sense for “I could care less.” I don’t see at all how you’re drawing a comparison to the “… NOT!” and the end of a sentence. That one is a joke, where you string along a person with something usually complimentary, then suddenly at the end you throw in the surprise negation.
How the hell is that anything like “I could care less”?
What different intonation? I’ve never noticed that people who say “could” vs. “couldn’t” use a different intonation at all.
I disagree that you are trying to have a reasoned conversation. I submit that you are simply arguing for the sake of argument. In this post:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17682108&postcount=128
you completely missed wolfpup’s point, which was a salient one, and your post is utterly non-responsive.
I don’t mean to pick on you, but THIS, not “I could care less,” is the sort of poor use of language that we should get worried about. I’ve read this sentence several times and cannot figure out how the word “allow” makes any sense in it. What’s your proposal: do we jail people who use the phrase? Kick them off the airplane? Pummel them in the streets? I don’t think you’re communicating very clearly here, certainly not as clearly as I’d communicate were I to say, “I could care less about arbitrary rules of convention.” The only person who’d fail to get my meaning would be someone deliberately failing.
It’s one of my problems as a teacher. I joke around with students as I pass out papers, and today as a student helped me, I said something like, “Thanks, Susan, that’s a ginormous help. Even though ‘ginormous’ isn’t even a word it’s a ginormous help.”
A student nearby thought about it for a minute and said, “Yeah it is! If ‘flub’ can be a word, ‘ginormous’ can be a word!” His logic, while appealing, doesn’t really hold up. However, he was right.
“You’re right,” I said. “Of course it’s a word, since you know what I meant when I said it. I should’ve said, even though it’s not a word in the dictionary.”
It’s always a precarious balance between confusing students and misleading them. I try to be clear when I teach kids the conventions of spoken and written English that they’re rules of a game, not absolute rules of the universe. If you said, “Is you ready?” at home, that’s a fine thing to say, even if I’ll encourage, “Are you ready?” in the classroom.
Uh, his point was a simple, simplistic point; I explained it in that post and explained how his belief in the superiority of conventions was undermined by the post. Do you understand how it’s undermined? Your posts have oscillated between Grand Guignol and two-bit cheerleading. You’re in no position to critique my own posts.
Personally, I do say them differently, but I wouldn’t call the intonation saracasm, necessarily. I’m not really buying that explanation. I say something like “I could CARE LESS,” with a slightly elongated “care” and “less” vs a normal straight reading. But not everyone does it this way. Some do, I think, say it with a straight intonation. It really doesn’t make a difference to me, as it’s an ironic idiom. It doesn’t have to make literal sense. I personally don’t think it developed out of a mishearing error, but whether it did or didn’t is immaterial to me.
Except that it is. (Collins and Merriam-Webster both have it. It is, of course, informal.)
Oops–thanks! I’ll let him know that on Tuesday. He’ll be pleased.
You might have to check the unabridged versions, though. Apparently–and I was a little surprised–the word dates back to at least 1948, possibly 1942, according to that source.
It’s only in the ginormous dictionaries?
It’s interesting that an innocent topic like this seems to evoke deeply held beliefs which are then defended with corresponding vehemence. My own belief is that the fundamental purpose of language is communication. By this I mean communication in the broadest sense of the word, not just the technical communication of information but the communication of emotions and imagery and the engendering of ideas and inspiration. It’s all communication. Which may sound like a simplistic truism until one realizes how much of what we do with language undermines that fundamental purpose.
As much as creative writing can bend and break every rule that’s ever been made – and I do it all the time – there really is such a thing as incorrect usage, and when we engage in it we are usually (not always) contributing to some combination of undermining communication and degrading the language. Not even the linguistic freethinkers who pontificate on such matters really disagree with this; I think we just disagree on where the boundaries are. To those who think “I could care less” is within those boundaries and is a terrific way of communicating the fact that they couldn’t, I would ask what they would say in a situation where they could, in fact, care less. A particular phrase has been robbed of its meaning and perverted into its inverse, to no useful end. The etymology of the mistake may be interesting but is ultimately irrelevant.
But that’s what this whole thread is about - whether it came from a mis-hearing error or was intentionally phrased to be sarcastic.
My opinion is those who say it was intentionally sarcastic have a huge plausibility problem to overcome, and no evidence. Clearly (to me), the most plausible explanation is that it was mis-heard and carelessly repeated. The intentionally-sarcastic explanation just doesn’t make sense, because sarcasm always says the opposite of what is meant, while “could care less” doesn’t.
Little did I think that my innocent OP would spawn a four page thread …
It does occur to me to wonder what the appropriate response of the “could care less” advocates would be if they were asked point blank (about something which doesn’t concern them remotely , let’s call it “issue X”) "Mr Freethinker, could you care less about issue X? ".
Would the answer be “yes” or “no” ?