typo that is ubiquitous here on TPF for some reason

[cynicaster]

Many of the errors we have been discussing ( and others) are used regularly by the talking heads on TV. Those people are getting paid to read the news, so you'd think they might consider themselves professional speakers, and as such would exhibit some professional pride in doing their jobs well.

Three words: "begs the question".

 

[runnah]

Grammar is just an elitist tool to keep the common man down!

 

[The_Traveler]

Grammar is just an elitist tool to keep the common man down!

well, it's not working well enough

 

[JacaRanda]

Where does the photographer that had horrible books, horrible teachers, horrible schools, horrible parents and a horrible environment fit in? Born and raised in America.

Use TPF for grammar and photography lessons?

 

[runnah]

Grammar is just an elitist tool to keep the common man down!

well, it's not working well enough

What we lack in grammar we make up for in numbers.

 

[limr]

Many of the errors we have been discussing ( and others) are used regularly by the talking heads on TV. Those people are getting paid to read the news, so you'd think they might consider themselves professional speakers, and as such would exhibit some professional pride in doing their jobs well.

Three words: "begs the question".

Ugh, that drives me crazy! Everyone uses this phrase wrong. They think it means "raise the question."

The other thing that bothers me is: "If I would have told him to move, Uncle Harold would not have ruined my shot." This is wrong, The "would have" form belongs in the independent clause, not the conditional dependent clause. "If I HAD TOLD him to move, Uncle Harold would not have ruined my shot." Let's not even get into "would of"...

 

[mmaria]

I hope I get this right:

I like this thread. I hope I'll learn something. Thank you!

 

[limr]

First of all, maria - you are not only forgiven for your English, but you should also be applauded for your English!

Second:

"I could care less!"
Really? Let me know when you do, since most people couldn't care less.

I don't want to get started on this. It's not a mistake. The criticism of it is nothing more than selective hyper-literalism about language that is simply false.

To attribute hatred of “I could care less” to hyper-literalism seems like an attempt to gloss over an obvious blunder with a fancy-sounding term.

No, the term actually means something. It means that people decide that language is supposed to be completely logical and mean every single thing that it says, nothing more, nothing less. But of course, they only claim this for certain phrases that happen to bug them. Does anyone have problems with idiom such as at the end of the day? Step up to the plate? Raining cats and dogs? It took me forever? Other than them being overused cliches, does anyone suddenly get their panties up in a bunch and say, "But you're not literally stepping up to the plate, so I think it's totally wrong and idiotic to say that!" And yet, everyone is up in arms about a colloquialism that they have decided is "wrong" because *gasp* it doesn't mean exactly what it says! It's illogical! Unclean!

The fact is that language doesn't work in a logical fashion. Grammar rules and especially usage patterns do not always follow neat, predictable, rigid rules.

There is a difference between wittingly using an inversion of literal sense for the sake of sarcasm or cheekiness, and doing the same because you’re just too careless (or dense) to hear and repeat a phrase correctly.

Where do you think it comes from? "What, I could care less?"

It all comes down to whether you pledge allegiance to prescription or description in language. If you want to say “I could care less” then go for it—lots of people will tell you it’s acceptable and lots of people will tell you it’s not. But please, don’t try to make it sound like we have anything resembling a consensus on this among English usage commentators.

Never said there was a consensus. I just said that it's not accurate to say that the phrase is wrong. It might not fit into a limited number of English grammatical rules that have become the canon that is "Standard English" but it's not a sign of ignorance or laziness when people do not use Standard English.

For the record, count me among those who would sooner die than be caught uttering the phrase “I could care less” in situations where the exact opposite is the intended meaning.

Knock yourself out. (Don't worry, I don't mean that literally.)

 

[JacaRanda]

Oh oh oh oh. I don't see it on TPF, but what about 'also too' or 'also to'? I hear it often, so often, that I wonder if it's correct.

 

[astroNikon]

Many of the errors we have been discussing ( and others) are used regularly by the talking heads on TV. Those people are getting paid to read the news, so you'd think they might consider themselves professional speakers, and as such would exhibit some professional pride in doing their jobs well.

Three words: "begs the question".

Ugh, that drives me crazy! Everyone uses this phrase wrong. They think it means "raise the question."

The other thing that bothers me is: "If I would have told him to move, Uncle Harold would not have ruined my shot." This is wrong, The "would have" form belongs in the independent clause, not the conditional dependent clause. "If I HAD TOLD him to move, Uncle Harold would not have ruined my shot." Let's not even get into "would of"...

would of .... could of .. should of ..

as least I didn't type "to many" whilst heralding the simplicity of software tools. :mrgreen:


fyi ... the english language in the U.S. is so scattered .. there's southern, bostonian, texan, georgian, californian valley girl .. ugh ... too many. Or is that "to many"?

 

[480sparky]

First of all, maria - you are not only forgiven for your English, but you should also be applauded for your English!

Second:



I don't want to get started on this. It's not a mistake. The criticism of it is nothing more than selective hyper-literalism about language that is simply false.

To attribute hatred of “I could care less” to hyper-literalism seems like an attempt to gloss over an obvious blunder with a fancy-sounding term.

No, the term actually means something. It means that people decide that language is supposed to be completely logical and mean every single thing that it says, nothing more, nothing less. But of course, they only claim this for certain phrases that happen to bug them. Does anyone have problems with idiom such as at the end of the day? Step up to the plate? Raining cats and dogs? It took me forever? Other than them being overused cliches, does anyone suddenly get their panties up in a bunch and say, "But you're not literally stepping up to the plate, so I think it's totally wrong and idiotic to say that!" And yet, everyone is up in arms about a colloquialism that they have decided is "wrong" because *gasp* it doesn't mean exactly what it says! It's illogical! Unclean!

The fact is that language doesn't work in a logical fashion. Grammar rules and especially usage patterns do not always follow neat, predictable, rigid rules.



Where do you think it comes from? "What, I could care less?"

It all comes down to whether you pledge allegiance to prescription or description in language. If you want to say “I could care less” then go for it—lots of people will tell you it’s acceptable and lots of people will tell you it’s not. But please, don’t try to make it sound like we have anything resembling a consensus on this among English usage commentators.

Never said there was a consensus. I just said that it's not accurate to say that the phrase is wrong. It might not fit into a limited number of English grammatical rules that have become the canon that is "Standard English" but it's not a sign of ignorance or laziness when people do not use Standard English.

For the record, count me among those who would sooner die than be caught uttering the phrase “I could care less” in situations where the exact opposite is the intended meaning.

Knock yourself out. (Don't worry, I don't mean that literally.)

Well, since the language apparently has no rules, I have no idea what you're trying to say. You could mean one thing, but you could mean another. I don't know, it's hard to tell since there's no rules.

That said.............where's the bacon?

 

[cynicaster]

No, the term actually means something. It means that people decide that language is supposed to be completely logical and mean every single thing that it says, nothing more, nothing less. But of course, they only claim this for certain phrases that happen to bug them. Does anyone have problems with idiom such as at the end of the day? Step up to the plate? Raining cats and dogs? It took me forever? Other than them being overused cliches, does anyone suddenly get their panties up in a bunch and say, "But you're not literally stepping up to the plate, so I think it's totally wrong and idiotic to say that!" And yet, everyone is up in arms about a colloquialism that they have decided is "wrong" because *gasp* it doesn't mean exactly what it says! It's illogical! Unclean!

Obviously you know your English, so I'm surprised you're trying to use these other examples to lend legitimacy to "I could care less". Yes, they are all "non-literal" sayings that enjoy general acceptance, but they are also deliberately coined phrases that happened to catch on. Not so with "I could care less", which is quite clearly a misspoken phrase that somehow picked up steam (probably because it's easier to say than the phrase it bastardizes).

The fact is that language doesn't work in a logical fashion. Grammar rules and especially usage patterns do not always follow neat, predictable, rigid rules.

I agree 100%, but just because non-literal sayings can be valid does not mean that we must accept all of them as valid. Some things fly and some don't. Lots of people are of the opinion that "I could care less" doesn't fly, and for very good reason.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

 

[limr]

Agree to disagree, I guess.

I'm going to leave it at that.

Edited: Okay, I lied.

Idiomatic expressions are not deliberate in the way you suggest. It's not like some committee sits down and writes new idiomatic expressions. They can arise from many different situations, some more deliberate like metaphors, but others because yes, someone misheard or misspoke, or just made some **** up that makes no sense at all but people like it, understand the reference, and keep using it.

Some idiomatic expressions just bother people, though, and those are the target of scorn whereas other just-as-cringe-worthy expressions are left alone. Some have a stigma attached almost immediately and it never quite goes away.

From http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm

In these cases people have tried to apply logic, and it has failed them. Attempts to be logical about I could care less also fail. Taken literally, if one could care less, then one must care at least a little, which is obviously the opposite of what is meant. It is so clearly logical nonsense that to condemn it for being so (as some commentators have done) misses the point. The intent is obviously sarcastic — the speaker is really saying, “As if there was something in the world that I care less about”.

However, this doesn’t explain how it came about in the first place. Something caused the negative to vanish even while the original form of the expression was still very much in vogue and available for comparison. Stephen Pinker, inThe Language Instinct, points out that the pattern of intonation in the two versions is very different.

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.

There are plenty of illogical phrases in any language, English is no exception; some just have a social stigma attached to them and this is clearly one of them. That's not going to change, nor do I expect it to change. But linguistically, there's nothing about could care less that distinguishes it from any other illogical idiomatic expression. And yet, there's no outcry about "Tell me about it!" which functionally means exactly the opposite of what it says.

Yes, I'm generally a descriptivist. That doesn't mean that I don't have my grammar pet peeves. I obviously do because I just complained about some of them in this very thread. It just means that I understand that like it or not, language is going to change. That's because it is inherently a human construct and it is tied to behavior and cognition, and humans are fickle little bastards.

 

[limr]

Well, since the language apparently has no rules, I have no idea what you're trying to say. You could mean one thing, but you could mean another. I don't know, it's hard to tell since there's no rules.

That said.............where's the bacon?

So, in other words, TL;DR?

 

[480sparky]

Well, since the language apparently has no rules, I have no idea what you're trying to say. You could mean one thing, but you could mean another. I don't know, it's hard to tell since there's no rules.

That said.............where's the bacon?

So, in other words, TL;DR?

Maybe... I'm not sure.