Indoril Nerevar

I could care less that the thread has been hijacked. But it's fine - I like the discussion my post has started.

Drew1369

Its all just different dialects of the same base language. It's just like Mexican Spanish and Spanish spanish.

French, Quebec French and The Cajun language are all dialects as well.

But all in all... I could care less.

Indoril Nerevar

Now see, here's where it becomes confusing. What you've said that means that you do care, but the way you've said it suggests that you don't.

The "I could/couldn't care less" issue isn't simply one of differing dialects. The word "could" has the same meaning no matter where you are, so to say "I could care less" when you mean that you don't care is purely and simply wrong.

Drew1369

No, it means that not only do I not care, but there is a level even lower then not caring...


And that is not caring that you dont care

Indoril Nerevar

Think about it like this:

You have a number scale, from 0 to 10. The scale describes how much you care about something. 10 means that the particular thing is extremely important to you, and 0 means that you do not care about it at all.

Now, when you say "I could care less", you are putting your "caring mark" at something higher than 0 - even at 0.0001. It has to be higher than 0, because there has to be room below. You can't go beyond not caring - it's like -273 degress C (absolute zero). So when in fact you don't care, if you say "I could care less", you're contradicting yourself.

If you assume that there is something below not caring, as you have, the statement "I could care less" becomes irrelevant. It doesn't actually say anything about how much you care. It doesn't even say that you're at 0 on the scale. It just says that there's room below where you are. It's a pointless statement.

Now, saying "I couldn't care less" tells people exactly where you are on the scale. Because you can't care any less than you do, you must be at the very bottom of the scale (whether that be 0 or something else). Thus, it's an informative statement.

Whatever way you look at it, "I could care less" is either wrong or irrelevant.

jenae

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

Mcninjaguy

I could care quite not so much as I can.

Done_Fishin

I could understand "I couldn't care less" but I couldn't understand "I could care less"

of course I could understand that I could care less about Clinton than Obama

Mcninjaguy

I could care less if I had Larry King as my offspring, because I would have been dead for 200 million years or so.

Done_Fishin

Larry Who ???

Mcninjaguy

Larry King...

He's the interview guy on CNN, its fun to do old jokes about him but he's the best interviewer.

Its that he's bad its just fun to make fun of his age.

Zealex

The only time I watch cnn is when larry king is on :D. And he interviews someone interesting.