Tag: grammatical

[Repost] 4 Good Reasons Why People Say “I Could Care Less” (by Arika Okrent)

4 Good Reasons Why People Say “I Could Care Less”

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March 4th: It’s not only a date, it’s an imperative (march forth!). Since 2008 it has also been National Grammar Day, a holiday conceived by Martha Brockenbrough of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. Rather than use the occasion as a chance to go around correcting mistakes or teaching the finer points of usage (plenty of other people have those beats covered), I like to take the opportunity to focus on the sometimes weird and wonderful things that languages do (or that people do with languages). Last year I had fun with 7 Sentences That Sound Crazy But Are Still Grammatical. This year I’d like to go over a few good reasons why people say, “I could care less.” The list does not include “because they’re stupid and have no idea how logic works.” It turns out, there are a number of things about English that conspire to make “I could care less” a less irrational phrase than it might seem.

1. SARCASM

A number of language writers have suggested that “could care less” has a sarcastic reading, conveying something like “Ha! As if there were something in the world I could care less about.” There are some American Yiddish-inflected phrases that work this way, like “I should be so lucky!” (meaning “there’s no way I’m ever gonna be that lucky”) or “I should care!” (why should I care?). Even if “could care less” didn’t originate from a sarcastic intent, it matches up well enough with these other forms in the language to help give it staying power.

2. POSITIVE/NEGATIVE PHRASE PAIRS

Why use “could care less” if we also have “couldn’t care less”? There are other pairs of phrases in English about which you could ask the same question. Why say “that will teach you to leave your car unlocked” when you really mean “that will teach you not to leave your car unlocked.” Some other phrases that can mean the same thing with or without the negation:

You know squat about that. You don’t know squat about that.

I wonder whether we can make that work. I wonder whether we can’t make that work.

You shouldn’t go, I think. You shouldn’t go, I don’t think.

I can hardly wait. I can’t hardly wait.

Again, there’s an existing framework that helps “could care less” blend right in.

3. IMPLIED COMPARISON

Evidence for the use of “could care less” goes back to 1955, with “couldn’t care less” appearing only about 10 years before that. But long before that the phrase “No one could care less than I” was in use. Think about how you might respond to such a phrase in a certain type of conversation. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life! How dare they imply such a thing! No one could care less for the trappings of fame than I!”

“I could, darling. I could care less.”

The rest of the comparison, “than you,” is left understood. Perhaps “I could care less” also carries a shadow of the original phrase and a hidden comparison. “I could care less … than anyone.”

4. IDIOMS DON’T CARE ABOUT LOGIC

People might not have any thought of sarcasm, positive/negative phrase pairs, or implied comparison when they use “I could care less,” but when they use it, it’s as a set idiom, something they’ve heard before and learned as a unit. We have plenty of idioms that serve us perfectly well, despite the gaps in logic that appear if you look at them too closely. Consider “head over heels” (shouldn’t it be heels over head?) or “have your cake and eat it too?” (shouldn’t it be eat your cake and have it too?) or “the exception proves the rule” (shouldn’t it be the exception invalidates the rule?). There are reasons these idioms developed the way they did, but we don’t have to know anything about those reasons, or the original meanings, to use them perfectly sensibly. Same goes for “I could care less,” which people only ever use to mean “I couldn’t care less,” never the opposite. It doesn’t cause legitimate confusion, though it does cause quite a bit of consternation. In any case, it’s here to stay.

For more on “could care less” see the collection of links on this topic at LanguageLog, columns by Jan Freeman at Boston Globe, John McIntyre at the Baltimore Sun, and Ben Zimmer at Visual Thesaurus, and the snappy overview by Bill Walsh in Yes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk.

March 4, 2014 – 11:00am

Linguist, author of In the Land of Invented Languages, lives in Philadelphia, talks with a Chicago accent.

[Repost] A Word, Please: Superstitions of the grammatical kind (by June Casagrande)

A Word, Please: Superstitions of the grammatical kind

By June CasagrandeMarch 4, 2014 | 10:55 a.m.

How time flies.

It seems like just yesterday I was writing a column debunking the myth that it’s wrong to start a sentence with a conjunction.

And it seems like just the day before yesterday that I wrote the same thing. And the day before that, the same thing, going back about 12 years to when I started writing this column, bright-eyed and hopeful that I could make a difference by debunking grammar myths.

Foolish child. Grammar superstitions are a heck of a lot more powerful than I’ll ever be, as evidenced by an email I got recently from a reader named Paul in Venice, Calif. After some introductory matter of an ad hominem nature (“You’re an embarrassment” and the like), Paul proceeded to outline a number of grammar atrocities I committed in a recent column.

I do make mistakes in this column. When I get an e-mail with a subject line like “You’re very disappointing,” I cringe in anticipation of learning that I made an actual, you know, error. Happily, this was not such an instance.

All the mistakes Paul found in my column were his, rooted in a slew of common grammar superstitions. Paul’s biggest beef, judging by the amount of time he dedicated to it, was that I started four sentences with conjunctions.

A conjunction is a joining word that comes in several varieties. The best known are the coordinating conjunctions, the most common of which are “and,” “but,” “or” and “so.” These words coordinate — join — words, phrases or even whole clauses.

A much larger group, subordinating conjunctions, introduce clauses that are subordinate to some other clause in the sentence. For example, “if” is a subordinating conjunction in “If you want me, I’ll be in my room.” The word “if” renders the first clause subordinate, meaning it can’t stand on its own as a complete sentence.

There are other types of conjunctions too. But coordinators are the ones to note because, not only are they the most common, they’re also the subject of a widespread grammar superstition.

Some folks are taught that it’s wrong to start a sentence with one. So the sentence before last, which started with “but,” would be considered an error. So would this one. And this one would too.

Unfortunately for would-be critics too eager to play the “gotcha” game, that’s superstition. But you don’t have to take my word for it.

“There is a widespread belief — one with no historical or grammatical foundation — that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as ‘and,’ ‘but’ or ‘so,'” writes the Chicago Manual of Style.

“‘and,’ A. Beginning sentences with. It is a rank superstition that this coordinating conjunction cannot properly begin a sentence,” notes Garner’s Modern American Usage.

“‘but.’ A. Beginning sentences with. It is a gross canard that beginning a sentence with ‘but’ is stylistically slipshod. In fact, doing so is highly desirable in any number of contexts, as many stylebooks have said,” Garner’s adds.

“There is a persistent belief that it is improper to begin a sentence with ‘and,’ but this prohibition has been cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo-Saxon times onwards. An initial ‘and’ is a useful aid to writers as the narrative continues,” notes Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

I wrote Paul back to thank him, explaining that it’s a treat to open an email about mistakes I made and learn that I made none. I even threw in a little free advice for Paul — advice of the “Maybe do your homework before you fire off emails of the ‘You are an embarrassment’ variety.”

But Paul didn’t write back. And I don’t expect him to anytime soon.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

[Reposted from Veronica] Cf. original piece: “http://bit.ly/1hLEZlf“