"I COULD care less" or "I COULDN'T care less" Which is it?

There are two distinctly different meanings of "could" and "couldn't".

That phrase ["couldn't care less"] is an idiom, but to say "could care less" is merely a failed attempt to use it.

there is only one meaning for both "You know squat" and "You don't know squat".

What you are doing is trying to justify a mistake by disguising it as an idiom.

There is a vast difference between an idiom like "kick the bucket" and what we are discussing here.
"Could care less" is a failed attempt to use the idiom "couldn't care less", same as if I said "bucket the kick" that would be a failed attempt to use the idiom "kick the bucket".

What you are doing is trying to justify a mistake by disguising it as an idiom.

"Could care less" is a failed attempt to use the idiom "couldn't care less", same as if I said "bucket the kick" that would be a failed attempt to use the idiom "kick the bucket".

It comes from the meaning of the words used. If you use it the other way it means the oposite.

JTT
I know how language works. You put words together so that they make sense and communicate something of value. Or they don't make sense, in which case we generally conclude that the person doing the stringing together of words is somewhat dim witted.
Either way, you can not escape the fact that "I could care less" communicates the exact opposite of what the intended meaning is. The more you try the more ridiculous it gets.

If you can show me one single idiom in which the words used communicate the exact opposite of what the idiom means, I will tell you that the idiom serves to confuse and degenerate peoples understanding of the logic which is the foundation of grammar.

If you can show me one single idiom in which the words used communicate the exact opposite of what the idiom means, I will tell you that the idiom serves to confuse and degenerate peoples understanding of the logic which is the foundation of grammar.

If you can show me one single idiom in which the words used communicate the exact opposite of what the idiom means, I will tell you that the idiom serves to confuse and degenerate peoples understanding of the logic which is the foundation of grammar.

If you can show me one single idiom in which the words used communicate the exact opposite of what the idiom means, I will tell you that the idiom serves to confuse and degenerate peoples understanding of the logic which is the foundation of grammar.

A lot of people over here use double negatives. I didn't do nothing, we don't have no tomatoes.

Izzy wrote: I didn't do nothing, we don't have no tomatoes.

Dave mistakenly asserts: That is a denial of the state of being tomatoless.

It is an assertion that thay possess tomatos.

Lingua
Franca

October 10, 1998

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/lf981010.htm

Giving Up on Double Negation

...

However, Orwell's hostility to the not unjustifiable construction I've just mentioned, pales into insignificance beside the hostility that well-educated speakers of English feel toward a completely different phenomenon also called double negation, and that's the kind of negation illustrated in Cockney, by 'I didn't see nuffink'. This, educated people think, is mere ignorance.

Anyone with a logical bone in their head should be able to see, they maintain, that if you did not see nothing, then that means you did see something. If you claim that you didn't see nothing when you mean that you did see nothing, you are ignorant and unworthy and should be sent back to whatever awful school was responsible for the teaching you clearly didn't get.


Well, this is a thoroughly misdiagnosed situation. Let me explain how a linguist looks at the phenomenon in question. There is in fact only one negation in 'I didn't see nuffink', as used by Cockneys or working-class Australians or black Americans or anyone else who uses this device. It's the negative of 'I saw somefink', and what differentiates Cockney from Standard English has been entirely misidentified by calling it double negation.

Here it is, somewhat over-simplified: Standard English has three separate versions of the item whose positive version is 'something'. I am referring to the words 'something', 'nothing', and 'anything'. The first of these, 'something', is used in positive contexts, as in 'I saw something'; the second, 'nothing', is used to create negative clauses, as in 'I saw nothing'; and the third is used nearly everywhere else: in negative clauses like 'I didn't see anything', in conditional clauses like 'If I saw anything', in questions, like 'Did you see anything?' and various other contexts.

Cockney differs in one simple respect: the second and third versions are not distinguished. It's as if we had a language that was just like English but with 'anything' and 'nothing' pronounced the same. That's all that's going on.


The mistake is in seeing a mistake. This kind of usage is not a mistake. It's a form of words that is characteristic of many languages, including Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian and Cockney, but not Standard English. Linguists call it Negative Concord.

The Cambridge Grammar of English, I have decided, is not going to hush this up with a blush and a mumble and pass on as if embarrassed. It's going to great it seriously. It's going to explain, of course, that Negative Concord is not used in formal writing and should be avoided in all contexts where keeping up appearances is an issue.

But it is also going to explain how Negative Concord works, which is something like this: Everywhere you would get an 'any' word, like 'anything', 'anyone', 'anybody, 'anywhere', 'any', or the indefinite article 'a', Negative Concord languages require that you use the appropriate 'no' word instead. It doesn't matter how many there are in the sentence, this applies to all of them.

So if you take 'I don't want a linguist with a grammar book giving me any lectures about a proper way to speak to anybody', it comes out in Cockney or in a Negative Concord language, as 'I don't want no linguist with no grammar book giving me no lectures about no proper way to speak to nobody'.

That's not a sextuple negation, it's an ordinary single negation. But there are five indefinite words like 'a' and 'anybody' in there, and they all get pronounced in Cockney the same as the negative words 'no' and 'nobody'.

You have to learn this if you're going to make any claim to knowing English. Because if you believe that when the Rolling Stones play 'Satisfaction' and Mick Jagger sings 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction' he is singing about how it is impossible for him not to be satisfied, you can't even understand rock 'n' roll.

A fully competent speaker of English knows how to work out the meaning of both 'I am unable to obtain any satisfaction' and 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction', and knows that the first of those would be suitable in a business letter and the second would be appropriate in personal conversation in a pub in Spitalfields or Pentonville.

A person who cannot understand Mick Jagger's lyrics, even if they are written out on a sheet of paper (nobody can understand much of it when he's singing, of course, is not a better English speaker, but a worse one.


The way I see it, real class in being an English speaker involves understanding both the Queen saying, 'My husband and I cannot imagine anything nicer', and a Cockney speaker saying, 'Me old man and me can't fink of nuffink nicer'. Real class is being knowledgeable about the diversity of English as well as sensitive to the nuances of the different varieties. The status-obsessed grumblers who complain about other people's double negations do not have class. There is nothing classy about insensitivity to the complexity of the linguistic world around us. If you pay attention to linguistic diversity and appreciate the variety in your language, you'll find you can't get no satisfaction.

Izzy wrote: I didn't do nothing, we don't have no tomatoes.

Dave mistakenly asserts: That is a denial of the state of being tomatoless.

It is an assertion that thay possess tomatos.

You know that you are completely bonkers

when you suggest such inane notions, Om,
and yet on you go, parading your ignorance all over the place.

If the "logic" that you claim to be using, that double negatives make a positive, then that would be the case for all languages.

Yet there are language that use double negation in the same way that it is used in nonstandard English, that is, negative concord.

Read on, that you may no longer wallow in ignorance.

Lingua
Franca

October 10, 1998

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/lf981010.htm

Giving Up on Double Negation

...

However, Orwell's hostility to the not unjustifiable construction I've just mentioned, pales into insignificance beside the hostility that well-educated speakers of English feel toward a completely different phenomenon also called double negation, and that's the kind of negation illustrated in Cockney, by 'I didn't see nuffink'. This, educated people think, is mere ignorance.

Anyone with a logical bone in their head should be able to see, they maintain, that if you did not see nothing, then that means you did see something. If you claim that you didn't see nothing when you mean that you did see nothing, you are ignorant

and unworthy and should be sent back to whatever awful school was responsible for the teaching you clearly didn't get.

Well, this is a thoroughly misdiagnosed situation.
Let me explain how a linguist looks at the phenomenon in question.
There is in fact only one negation in 'I didn't see nuffink', as used by
Cockneys or working-class Australians or black Americans or anyone
else who uses this device. It's the negative of 'I saw somefink', and
what differentiates Cockney from Standard English has been entirely
misidentified by calling it double negation.

Here it is, somewhat over-simplified:
Standard English has three separate versions of the item whose positive version is 'something'. I am referring to the words 'something', 'nothing', and 'anything'. The first of these, 'something', is used in positive contexts, as in 'I saw something'; the second, 'nothing', is used to create negative clauses, as in 'I saw nothing'; and the third is used nearly everywhere else: in negative clauses like 'I didn't see anything', in conditional clauses like 'If I saw anything', in questions, like 'Did you see anything?' and various other contexts.

Cockney differs in one simple respect: the second and third versions
are not distinguished. It's as if we had a language that was just like
English but with 'anything' and 'nothing' pronounced the same.
That's all that's going on.

The mistake is in seeing a mistake. This kind of usage is not a mistake. It's a form of words that is characteristic of many languages, including Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian and Cockney, but not Standard English. Linguists call it Negative Concord.

The Cambridge Grammar of English, I have decided, is not
going to hush this up with a blush and a mumble and pass on as if
embarrassed. It's going to great it seriously.

It's going to explain, of course, that Negative Concord
is not used in formal writing and should be avoided in all contexts
where keeping up appearances is an issue.

But it is also going to explain how Negative Concord works, which is
something like this: Everywhere you would get an 'any' word,
like 'anything', 'anyone', 'anybody, 'anywhere', 'any', or the indefinite
article 'a', Negative Concord languages require that you use the
appropriate 'no' word instead. It doesn't matter how many there
are in the sentence, this applies to all of them.

So if you take 'I don't want a linguist with a grammar book
giving me any lectures about a proper way to speak to anybody',
it comes out in Cockney or in a Negative Concord language, as
'I don't want no linguist with no grammar book giving me no lectures
about no proper way to speak to nobody'.

That's not a sextuple negation, it's an ordinary single negation.
But there are five indefinite words like 'a' and 'anybody' in there,
and they all get pronounced in Cockney the same as the negative words 'no' and 'nobody'.

You have to learn this if you're going to make any claim to knowing English.

Because if you believe that when the Rolling Stones play
'Satisfaction' and Mick Jagger sings 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction' he
is singing about how it is impossible for him not to be satisfied,
you can't even understand rock 'n' roll.

A fully competent speaker of English knows how to work out the meaning
of both 'I am unable to obtain any satisfaction' and 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction',

and knows that the first of those would be suitable in a business letter
and the second would be appropriate in personal conversation
in a pub in Spitalfields or Pentonville.

A person who cannot understand Mick Jagger's lyrics, even if they
are written out on a sheet of paper (nobody can understand much of
it when he's singing, of course, is not a better English speaker, but a worse one.

The way I see it, real class in being an English speaker involves understanding both the Queen saying, 'My husband and I cannot imagine anything nicer', and a Cockney speaker saying, 'Me old man and me can't fink of nuffink nicer'. Real class is being knowledgeable about the diversity of English as well as sensitive to the nuances of the different varieties. The status-obsessed grumblers who complain about other people's double negations do not have class. There is nothing classy about insensitivity to the complexity of the linguistic world around us. If you pay attention to linguistic diversity and appreciate the variety in your language, you'll find you can't get no satisfaction.

You wouldn't be the first to criticise the contradictory idiom of the local vernacular. The meaning defies logic, but it is not logical, it's emotional

the double negative reenforces the meaning. Sometimes language responds to emotion every bit as much as it responds to logic.

If someone focuses on logic too much, they lack emotional maturity and accountability. Eventually they kiss reason goodbye. I'm sorry to say this Dave, but you're a classic example, totally barking. You say incredibly outrageous things just to get a reaction.

I think the most provocative thing you ever said, was that you didn't think Dick Cheney would shoot you in the face. You can't get more delusional than that, as if Cheney would ever miss an opportunity to shoot someone in the face. It's his thing, sort of like a catchphrase.

You know exactly what the meaning of "could care less" is

A lot of people over here use double negatives. I didn't do nothing, we don't have no tomatoes. Would that class as an example?