Why is it that Americans say "I could care less"

[ICohen]

Well, thank you everyone. It seems that there are two points that we can take away from here:

1. It is a subset of Americans that have dropped the "n't".
2. That subset don't know why they say "I could care less", they just do.

Ian

[BoneQuint]

I'm wondering if someone can explain it?

I could: careless.

[talasiga]

You'll know when you've touched a raw nerve when your posts disappear without explanation.

Name calling will get your posts deleted without explanation... except this time that is.

What? Are you suggesting that saying to ICohen that his posts are too clutzy to touch a raw nerve is name calling? Its an opinion about his posts and not about him. Name calling would be like if I called someone a musclehead. I didn't do that because that sort of thing isn't funny.

I doubt if anybody in Australasia, Ireland or the UK would take my comment as personal name calling.

I am sorry if my humour, or my failed attempts at it, touch your raw nerve. How clutzy of me!

[Flyingcursor]

You'll know when you've touched a raw nerve when your posts disappear without explanation.

Name calling will get your posts deleted without explanation... except this time that is.

Would that include calling someone an impeccable whistler?
How about, "JES, your a...a.. Moderator!!!!"

[djm]

How about, "JES, your a...a.. Moderator!!!!"

Except that "your" is an adjective indicating possession. For your sentence to have any meaning, you would have to correct this to "you're", which is a contraction of "you are". The your/you're spelling error is another common mistake I often see in American spelling. Clutzy, clutzy, clutzy!

Also, JES is without question a great big, nasty moderator, and I'll bet his mother was a moderator, too.

djm

[talasiga]

..... impeccable ........

the correct spelling is "impeachable".

[emmline]

The your/you're spelling error is another common mistake I often see in American spelling. Clutzy, clutzy, clutzy!

Is there no one with wobbly spelling in other English speaking countries? Just curios. (Perhaps the answer is obvios.)

Here is an example of two of my usage pet peeves in one:
(Each of these occur commonly in the States. I cannot speak for other countries.)

There is a hanging shingle sign by the road in front of a house I pass frequently. It says The "Hardesty's"

What do they mean by the quotes? That their actual name isn't Hardesty? Maybe it's really Hoffa or something?
And what about the apostrophe? They must be indicating that the house and property belong to them. Yeah, that's it.

[LadyDi]

A bit like when people type, "I would of done that," or something similar.

Yeah... on another message board I read, someone inserted the following into their post:

:::walla:::

Which was supposed to be VOILA, as in, "There!" en francias... but she trascribed phonetically what she's been hearing people say all these years. She must be terribly confused and have absolutely no idea where this word comes from if she thinks it's really "walla."

Weird.

[talasiga]

.......
There is a hanging shingle sign by the road in front of a house I pass frequently. It says The "Hardesty's"

What do they mean by the quotes? That their actual name isn't Hardesty? Maybe it's really Hoffa or something?
And what about the apostrophe? They must be indicating that the house and property belong to them. Yeah, that's it.

You're half way there my dear.
It is in inverted commas because they are paying off a mortgage.

[Doug_Tipple]

I think that negatives in the English language are sometimes confusing. For example, consider this passage from Thoreau's " Walden":

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"

I would have written "and see if I could learn what it had to teach" instead of what Thoreau wrote. It makes more sense to me. Too many negatives in a long sentence makes for confusion.

The common confusion of the spoken words "partial" and "parcel" are often amusing, as well. Some of the workers at my post office often refer to parcel post as partial post. When they ask me whether I want to send my package by partial post, I sometimes reply that, no, I would really like to send the whole package and not just part of it. They don't know what I am talking about, so I don't say that anymore. I have learned to be content sending my packages by partial post.

[talasiga]

Doug, I used to be partial to your posts
but I seem to have gotten too used to your style
and, now, I am beginning to grow impartial to them.

[Innocent Bystander]

Doug, if you ever find the time or inclination to rewrite Walden Pond, I'd like the chance to read your version.

[djm]

I would have written "and see if I could learn what it had to teach" instead of what Thoreau wrote. It makes more sense to me. Too many negatives in a long sentence makes for confusion.

The significance in Thoreau's statement is the part about wanting to feel a sense of accomplishment at having lived a full life, and not necessarily about living in the woods. In fact, Thoreau didn't hang around in the woods much at all, and soon skedaddled back to civilisation. Also, I think he was trying to be clever and entertaining in his choice of phrases.

Perhaps you knew all that, but had some other point to make. If I am missing something blatantly obvious to everyone else, please tell me what it is.

djm

[lenf]

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"

I would have written "and see if I could learn what it had to teach" instead of what Thoreau wrote. It makes more sense to me. Too many negatives in a long sentence makes for confusion.

To me, the two phrases have a different beginning point. Thoreau, I think, is saying that he placed himself in the wood as a new origin, accepting the demands it made upon him, to "see if I could not learn."

"Too see if I could learn..." reads more as if approaching nature, the woods, from the outside, the way almost all of us would have to approach nature today.

At the same time, I wonder if we can read Thoreau today as it might have been read by those of his time. Was there an "art" of contemplative reading that has become almost extinct in this age?

[lenf]

There is a hanging shingle sign by the road in front of a house I pass frequently. It says The "Hardesty's"
And what about the apostrophe? They must be indicating that the house and property belong to them. Yeah, that's it.

Now, if this gets into apostrophes, I'm sorry, but if you come visit South Texas, you'll go home feeling blessed that you have so few misplaced apostrophes around. Within three miles of where I live, there's a large firm advertising Professional Sign's. A proud family with two sons in the Marines has a large color sign in the front yard God Bless Our Boy's. Near that house is a small business that rents Table's & Chair's. Even the large car dealership on the corner, on its big electric message board, advertises its Service Hour's.

It makes one appreciate the smaller hand-painted sign at the entrance to a farm which refuses to go along with the local punctuation norms. The little sign simply offers Pig,s Goat,s 4 Sell.