• toast@retrolemmy.com
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    4 months ago

    If you can care less, why mention it? It is an empty statement, supporting nothing. It has no rhetorical impact at all, except that reinforces the idea in your audience that you haven’t even a good grasp of the language you are using.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Perhaps you are an English speaker from outside the US? It is an often used and well known colloquialism in the states. It’s not any more empty than other accepted forms of speech that lack traditional grammar or syntax.

      https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/could-couldnt-care-less

      To a non US English speaker it would understandably sound strange. But to correct someone using this phrase in the states would only make one look like a prick.

      • toast@retrolemmy.com
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        4 months ago

        It is an often used and well known colloquialism

        It is a bastardization of a well known colloquialism

        To a non US English speaker it would understandably sound strange

        To English speakers who’ve heard it and have given it any thought, it just sounds careless, or stupid

        If someone were to point out something like this to me, I’d just say “oops”, learn from it, and move on. I wouldn’t double down on it. It’s like defending ‘would of’, or ‘supposably’ - obvious mishearings of other words. People know what you mean; it is just that you are also telling them something you probably don’t mean to.

        • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          That’s just how language evolves. You can pick lots of hills to die on with so called bastardization of the English language, it’s full of these. If you understand this is part of modern English and just pick fights on the internet, congrats - you have a full time hobby. No one is doubling down, I could care less how you choose to speak, I just thought perhaps you were unaware that in parts of the world this is accepted evolution of the language.

          • toast@retrolemmy.com
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            4 months ago

            Eye sea. Ewe our sew wright. Make language mistake non possible. Easy awl understand every won know matter what. Y try harder