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 _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
