I’m not presenting it as a reason or justification, but as a fact. You, personally, are unable to engineer the course of the language, and your resistance to a change does not stop the change from occurring. The language does not need your acceptance for change to occur. It may seem to you like it’s changing for no reason whatsoever, but that’s only because — sitting there in your armchair — you’re unable to come up with a good reason off the top of your head.
Saying that it takes you longer to parse the sentence is anecdotal nonsense, because there’s no way for you to measure that without doing a controlled psycholinguistics experiment.
What I said was fairly clear, but to be explicit, room and board is relevant to could care less because it shows that forms can fossilize. It does not matter that board doesn’t mean ‘food’ anymore, just as it no longer matters that could care less means the opposite of what it would literally. You don’t mention my example of a little bird told me, but it is relevant because it shows that idioms do not have to be interpreted as the literal sum of their parts (and, in fact, by definition, aren’t).
You’re missing the point of just about everything I originally said, and you really don’t address any of the arguments I brought up, other than to say you fail to understand them.
It may seem to you like it’s changing for no reason whatsoever, but that’s only because — sitting there in your armchair — you’re unable to come up with a good reason off the top of your head.
That's basically "you cannot prove there isn't a good reason". That's the case by definition. The burden for justifying the change lies with those supporting the change.
Saying that it takes you longer to parse the sentence is anecdotal nonsense
There is nothing anecdotal about my experience. If I have to blink and think twice about what someone is saying, then he is using nonstandard idiom.
it shows that forms can fossilize
That stuff can fossilize, doesn't mean we should let it fossilize. You're rehearsing the fallacy I was pointing out: 'could care less' is not fossilized and there is no bloody reason to allow it to fossilize. Moreover, you're comparing something that used to be standard idiom and has fossilized in that state with something that is changing and may fossilize in that new, changed state. The argument for the first rests entirely it's history and age, both of which the second lacks.
The burden for justifying the change lies with those supporting the change.
You’re the one categorically claiming that the way people talk is somehow ‘wrong’. If you want to make that claim, you need to support it. Without going into highly technical details, I explained some ways why the usage could make sense. Your response was simply to say, as if declaring it somehow makes it true, that there is no reason for the usage.
There is nothing anecdotal about my experience. If I have to blink and think twice about what someone is saying, then he is using nonstandard idiom.
By definition your experience is anecdotal. I doubt you have to think twice when someone says it, but we’d have to subject you to an experiment to be sure. But simply put, there are so many cognitive biases that may potentially be at work that you really can’t reliably judge yourself whether it takes you longer to process. Sentence processing happens on the order of tens of milliseconds.
That stuff can fossilize, doesn't mean we should let it fossilize.
You’re assuming that you have some control over whether the use develops in the language. I’m saying that’s a flawed assumption and that you don’t.
If you’re so sure the usage is wrong, it may be interesting to note how many hits there are for each phrase in Google’s index:
2,220,000 for "could care less"
1,410,000 for "couldn't care less"
I readily admit that this, too, is anecdotal evidence. But it’s quite telling, no?
The presence of the apostrophe is an orthographic convention and has nothing to do with language in the least. There’s no apostrophe in it’s when people pronounce it.
Hmm, I'm intrigued by your assertion that orthography has nothing to do with language, but indeed you're right that this is an issue which relates to spoken language, so I'll ask a different question:
How would you describe the use of "isn't" where "am not" is generally considered grammatical?
For example "I isn't a liar" rather than "I am not a liar".
Again, you’re missing the point. I can’t prescriptively judge whether something is grammatical or not, nor can anyone else. Grammaticality isn’t something which someone decides — a grammatical sentence is by definition a sentence which speakers of the language produce and understand. It is grammatical if people use it. If there is a particular dialect of English where they use isn’t as the first person singular form of the copula, then it is grammatical.
It would not be grammatical in the standard American English dialect, which I think is what you’re getting at. But you have to be careful with your terms here, because in the technical sense ‘grammatical’ means an acceptable sentence of the language, whereas I have a feeling your understanding of ‘grammatical’ means ‘how we were taught to write in school to communicate to other people that we have been educated’. My entire point is that there’s a difference.
You would probably call the sentence
He been had that job.
completely ungrammatical. In Black Vernacular English, however, it’s perfectly acceptable. What’s more, depending on the pronunciation of been, this sentence can communicate a tense that doesn’t exist in standard American English. In SAE it can only be communicated by adjunct material like ‘for a long time’. Ostensibly, this is more efficient.
Part of our difficulty to understand each other may be that "wrong" is often used to imply some sort of value judgment. I should stress I'm not using it in that way, just as a statement of fact.
I would strongly assert that X years ago, when "I couldn't care less" was the only popularly used version, saying "I could care less" was both lazy and ignorant: lazy because it's dropping a syllable for the ease of the speaker despite making it more difficult for the listener; ignorant because the speaker doesn't realise they're doing it.
Whether it's lazy and ignorant now is a harder question to answer. I'm not familiar with North American usage of the phrase.
I guess my comments may come across as slightly antagonistic, but I don’t mean them that way at all. I’m just very excited about the topic of language in general.
I should tell you that I have a masters degree in linguistics, so I’m not pulling any of this out of thin air. Most of the arguments I’ve made are more or less generally understood among the linguistic community. Most of the objections and issues you are raising are the kind of questions that are dealt with in undergraduate linguistics courses.
I don’t have time to continue discussing this today unfortunately, but if you’re really interested in this stuff, you should reader The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. He does a far better job at systematically explaining these issues than I do. Something like The Foundations of Language by Jackendoff is much more technical but also a very good introduction.
Oh no, don't worry. Quick-fire written discussions are hard, so I don't hold any antagonism against you. No offence taken, and I hope you understand I too was writing out of interest rather than a desire to be argumentative.
I was wrong in my assumptions about the current usage of the phrase, as you've already pointed out, so I concede the argument.
I'm very interested in the use of language too, which is why I enjoyed the discussion, though I've never formally studied it. Thank you for the recommendations.
This debate is an instance of a strange phenomenon which I don't yet know yet understand how to resolve.
If someone wrote a serious piece on the internet, containing in all seriousness, the phrase "I isn't very happy about dat" then it's certainly possible to write an interesting essay on culture, the use of colloquialism, evolution of language etc., but I also think it's equally valid for me to summarize my position by saying "Your grammar is incorrect, and you've spelled 'that' wrongly. Please don't do it again in a serious article.".
In much the same way, if someone wrote "integration is reverse of differentiation" I could explain at length why this is not true but often it's more effective to accept it as an approximately true statement and move on to discussing more important things.
There is an excellent page in the introduction of Jackendoff’s book that I think is a great illustration of just how complex language is, to be trying to talk about it in an ad hoc manner.
No, that’s not really what I’m saying at all. Human language is not simply a series of control paths that branch the way you’ve described. That’s exactly how people tried to program computers to understand language 50 years ago, and what resulted is toy things like Eliza.
What I said is that the two uses are entirely different words, because they’re pronounced differently. You’re right that it’s bizarre — that’s why no one knows how language works yet.
Taking the stance that people speak English ‘wrong’ is not a simple interpretation, because it leads to the following question: please define what ‘wrong’ means.
I agree that the study of linguistic phenomena is a deep and interesting subject which humanity has only scraped the surface of.
However, I'm more inclined to have a pratically based discussion than a philosophically based one, where we risk infinite regress by asking each other to define the words that we use.
Can you give me another example where the utterance "I could X" means "It's not possible for me to X"? If not then I argue that the change in usage adds unnecessary complexity to the language that makes it harder to understand. It doesn't matter how this phenomenon is to be understood in terms of sophisticated linguistic theories; at a basic and practical level it impedes understanding.
Simply put, we may or may not be going through a period of transition in the language; it will be impossible to tell until much later. However I do know that during the transition those speakers who are used to the traditional form "I couldn't care less" have to work harder to understand when "I could care less" is used to express the same meaning.
It’s funny, because you’re not inclined to have a practical discussion rather than a philosophical one — my entire point is that by declaring that people are speaking the language ‘wrong’, you are yourself introducing the entire philosophical question of what ‘wrong’ means. You can’t say people are speaking the language wrong unless you’re ready to define what ‘wrong’ means. And I think you’ve realized that there’s no good way to answer that question.
Can you give me another example of where we use the word board in English to mean food? If not, I could ask you never use the phrase room and board again. But that would be silly. It does not matter whether could care less is a one-off instance — it is an idiom and that is the entire point. It does not matter whether you argue that the phrase adds unnecessary complexity to the language: it is already in the language despite your objections, because people use it. There’s nothing you can do to change that. Language is what people say; if they say it, it’s language.
It does not impede understanding because the idiomatic usage is pronounced differently. There is no confusion and no ambiguity. What you are saying simply isn’t the case.
Finally, it’s not the case that we ‘may or may not’ be going through a period of transition in the language. Language change is always happening.
Finally, it’s not the case that we ‘may or may not’ be going through a period of transition in the language. Language change is always happening.
I mean with respect to this specific observation. If in five years time nobody ever says "I could care less" then I don't believe people's current use of "I could care less" constitutes a transition in the language, I believe it constitutes incorrectness.
My point is that transition in language is only observable after the fact. If I start calling apples "coconuts", and it doesn't catch on, then that's just mean speaking incorrectly. If it does catch on then it's the start of a transition. But which of the two it is is impossible to say until much later.
Can you give me another example of where we use the word board in English to mean food?
This is not a sufficient counterexample. The two cases are too different to be compared.
1. Notice that in the "care less" example, it is the phrase that has changed, whilst the surrounding language has remained the same, whilst in the "board" example the phrase has remained the same, whilst the surrounding language has changed.
2. "Room and board" is not in popular usage whilst "I could care less" is (as far as I understand). Thus the potential for confusion is greater.
3. "Room and board" has a long established use. The use of "could care less" is much more recent.
You might have a point, but you'll have to find a closer example to convince me.
I could ask you never use the phrase room and board again.
If you found the phrase confused you, I'd comply. I'm not asking an authority to change the general usage of "I could care less". I'm suggesting that it's worth noticing that a change has occurred, that the change conflicts with literal interpretation, and that the people I communicate with could, for clarity, use the original version.
Notice that in the "care less" example, it is the phrase that has changed, whilst the surrounding language has remained the same, whilst in the "board" example the phrase has remained the same, whilst the surrounding language has changed.
I used room and board for the sake of argument because I felt it was easy to understand. It may be true that the meaning of could care less has changed, but Pinker’s analysis is that it has not — it always meant the opposite of its literal interpretation.
You really can’t imagine some kid intoning in a sickly sarcastic voice to their parents, ‘Oh, I could SO care less!’? You must realize the kind of massive influence youth subcultures have on the language, and from there it’s really not a big leap to image how a usage could enter the language that means the opposite of its literal interpretation.
"Room and board" is not in popular usage whilst "I could care less" is (as far as I understand). Thus the potential for confusion is greater.
Completely disagree. A quick look at the number of hits in Google’s index shows that they’re both in common use:
2,220,000 for "could care less”
1,960,000 for "room and board"
Anecdotal, but telling. If you really wanted me to, I could do a corpus search in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, but I expect the results would be about the same.
"Room and board" has a long established use. The use of "could care less" is much more recent.
I checked the OED and could care less seems to have been in use since the 1960s. Therefore, both phrases have been in use since well before I was born. So, for me, and most people who aren’t really old, they’re both completely established.
If you found the phrase confused you, I'd comply.
The crux, though, is that it would still be in the language. Just because you stop producing it doesn’t mean it’s been wiped from existence. If someone came up to you and used it, you couldn’t help but understand what they just said to you. More importantly, though, there’s no reason why you should stop using perfectly legitimate language just because someone else says it doesn’t make sense, but when it’s obvious that it does make sense, because everyone understands you when you say it.
it’s really not a big leap to image how a usage could enter the language that means the opposite of its literal interpretation.
Indeed, "wicked", "ill", "sick" all spring to mind.
I wonder what it is that I object to in "I could care less" that I don't in "wicked". Perhaps the length of the component that must be understood on it's own. Imagine a multi-line paragraph which meant something different to its literal interpretation, but only if those exact words were used, and the meaning did not transfer if you replaced some of the grammatical substructure. I'd find that very confusing, and this is an extreme version of the phrase currently under discussion.
A quick look at the number of hits in Google’s index shows that they’re both in common use
I stand corrected.
I checked the OED and could care less seems to have been in use since the 1960s.
You're right, and this weakens a great deal of my argument. I presumed it was a very recent phenomenon.
The crux, though, is that it would still be in the language.
It's not in use in British English, and if British people start talking like that to me I will point out to them that what they are saying is confusing. What effect that will have remains to be seen.
Actually it makes my argument redundant, since I was working with the assumption that "I could care less" was a form of slang which was growing in popular usage.
So thank you for the information and I withdraw my case! When the phrase starts becoming used in Britain we'll take up the discussion again!
It does not impede understanding because the idiomatic usage is pronounced differently. There is no confusion and no ambiguity.
I've never heard it pronounced because we don't use that phrase in Britain. It's always "I couldn't care less". It does lead to confusion when it's seen written.
Could you describe the difference in pronunciation of "I could care less" used under the two different meanings?
I'm from the US, and I don't think there is a difference in pronunciation. In fact, its gotten to the point where when someone says "I could care less" I generally ask them to clarify unless the meaning is made obvious by context.
That being said, there is usually sufficient context (in my experience, admittetly anecdotal) to figure out the meaning.
It’s funny, because you’re not inclined to have a practical discussion rather than a philosophical one — my entire point is that by declaring that people are speaking the language ‘wrong’, you are yourself introducing the entire philosophical question of what ‘wrong’ means.
By declaring anything I'm introducing the entire philosophical question of what any word I use means.
We generally omit details of relative unimportance. In this case I suppose you think that the definition of "wrong" is very important to the discussion, whilst I think that the people I generally want to communicate with have a shared understanding of that concept.
We don't really have enough agreement over basic principles to continue the discussion.
He may be unable to engineer the course of the language, but he can influence the language used by those who want to communicate with him. Perhaps the original post can be understood as an attempt to influence the language used on Hacker News. If we end up speaking differently from the majority then so be it as long as we find our usage beneficial.
Saying that it takes you longer to parse the sentence is anecdotal nonsense, because there’s no way for you to measure that without doing a controlled psycholinguistics experiment.
What I said was fairly clear, but to be explicit, room and board is relevant to could care less because it shows that forms can fossilize. It does not matter that board doesn’t mean ‘food’ anymore, just as it no longer matters that could care less means the opposite of what it would literally. You don’t mention my example of a little bird told me, but it is relevant because it shows that idioms do not have to be interpreted as the literal sum of their parts (and, in fact, by definition, aren’t).
You’re missing the point of just about everything I originally said, and you really don’t address any of the arguments I brought up, other than to say you fail to understand them.