Hear, hear!
(And *not* the abombination, "here, here")
Williams, Jim wrote:
> Yes, Mark, Andrew, & Quinion.com!
> Such statements are dripping with irony!
> My pet peeves are misuse of
> it's (it is) and its...
> they're, there, and their...
> company's, companies,and companies'...
> etc.
> College students enter college these days with a large sense of self-esteem, if not
> self-importance, but with an ever-diminishing level of literacy and numeracy...and
> they could('nt) seem to care less! ;-)
>
> Guess who's grading assignments this morning... ;-)
> Jim W.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark D. Lew [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Fri 12-Sep-03 4:03
> To: finale list
> Cc:
> Subject: [Finale] "I could care less" (was Re: Finale Digest, Vol 2, Issue 10)
>
>
>
> At 4:13 PM 09/10/03, Andrew Stiller wrote:
>
> >If you really want to know, check out
> >http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-ico1.htm,
> >from wh. the following is excerpted:
> >
> >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.
>
> Another way of looking at it is that "I could care less" (or "I should be
> so lucky", etc.) is a truncation of a disbelieving subjunctive. In other
> words, it's short for something like "If I could care less, then I could
> fly to the moon", except that the speaker doesn't finish the thought.
>
> Over the years I've come to conclude that about half the people who kvetch
> about "I could care less" (which half may or may not include Chuck but
> certainly includes my mother...) are so happy to pontificate on how
> ignorant it is that they really don't want to hear a logical explanation.
> Same goes for those who kvetch about pronouncing "nuclear" like "nucular".
>
> mdl
>
>
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--
Robert Patterson
http://RobertGPatterson.com
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