Lots of Yiddish idioms are in the form of a question, and if a translator misses the implied question mark, all meaning is lost. The phrase "I could care less" is the result of applying a tin ear to a sarcastic Yiddish idiom. The Yiddish idiom translates to either "Ask me if I could care less." or to "I could care less?" with an implied answer of no.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Bill Johnson [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, June 20, 2022 1:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Some UNIX file usage questions That’s beautiful. And a pet peeve of mine. Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Monday, June 20, 2022, 1:47 PM, Tony Harminc <[email protected]> wrote: On Mon, 20 Jun 2022 at 13:34, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote: > > I could care less about Python. Could you care a lot less, or just a little bit less? There is surely quite a range of caring. Here's a little chart that may help you express how much you care about Python or anything else. https://secure-web.cisco.com/16CRWKkUrMgD9pDogvnYC_EbWgZD1VlLv7UOw61WcRJVoY9UUv19oUi2HWjDntug-PM7p8aoTWwCpePD3NEETKK-LAeOZ7yEELjbxyKF841Dz0X9bRqsU5EVpuSXgqmMRjceQCstrDiqoSCL7wG0lu0hhFeLftH_8WXt8hrKjNKvhLeuSEVWTprDeZkXwegFUtQcnTnQMaz5hKkhJTxpvad835hL57KhoZjNZzoXsVv54KS8cChCeg9dM8ikMpmvnkD9qmRBdZuP0dHeaot8JluvmZIUi1SqoKWRjhfIC5L0KHqPUZCLXeVgLUff-Pxasi2J7GV1BkR_Xw6QSLdWr3513elvKl3iWZD3fgMdbBVbHCVSeBNBBQO4wxE-izWURb3kAW0qziMvuAG8GKt7KSjNxar4DYrpThC2WA0-1pujWHLvPX03H5Ybv1X-vgoYj/https%3A%2F%2Fincompetech.com%2Fgallimaufry%2Fcare_less.html Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
