he / him
'By' accident sounds awful to me. *shrugs*
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'By' accident sounds awful to me. *shrugs*
I could care less what Europeans think of American colloquialisms.
Please tell me this is a joke oh dear god.
Island
Staff member
That's the right phrasing though??
Also I say "on accident".. but I guess it's an American thing.
(Just to clarify I say "couldn't care less" usually, but I was just making a point.)
I've been thinking a lot about this topic recently and I feel very strongly that the biggest problem with the Witness lyrics are the melodies chosen for them (or the melodies they were written to) and (most importantly) Katy's delivery of them. I was listening to Melodrama the other day and couldn't help thinking how silly many of the lyrics (which are deemed brilliant, rightfully) would have sounded coming out of someone else's mouth. Can anyone imagine Katy singing the lyrics on that album without turning them into a cringefest? On the other hand, I don't find it hard at all to picture Lorde selling even the clunkiest lines on Witness.
This always happens when artists want to have creative control on albums. They always want to say something or think they know best over record labels... this album, unfortunately, is just bad. Also, who releases a video for a song months after it's been out as a single... everything was handled poorly this era but it's a poor album, so they didn't have much to work with.
This can (and should) be inversed. Imagine an artist with a scrap of agency! The horror!
Many an album has been sabotaged by too much label tinkering.
Are you doing this by purpose?
It's 'couldn't care less'. Saying 'I could care less' is you are admitting that you could actually care less about something. Which basically undoes what you're trying to emphasise (i.e. your lack of fucks).
If you 'couldn't care less', it means you can't possibly give less of a fuck about something. And that's what you're trying to convey when you want to use that phrase.
TWUNNY TWUNNY.
Let's not pretend as if American English isn't its own separate entity. Half of the language and lingo and slang that is frequently used on this forum has originated from this side of the pond. None of that renders any superiority but it does prove that certain phrasing has obviously reached boundaries outside of the United States and have become widely accepted. As a writer, it's hard not to be slightly repulsed by the incorrect use of "on accident" every now and then. But also, as an American, it's hard not to accept it as the way people speak regardless of education and technicalities. It's a colloquialism here; it is not a sign of insolence or ignorance.
It's just terribly ironic that the island of 1000 accents somehow manages to take issue with Americanisms. AND A GLASWEGIAN NO LESS.*
*This obviously meant @RJF who I believe is Glaswegian. But it applies to the Edinburgh native @dodoriazarbon too.
*This obviously meant @RJF who I believe is Glaswegian. But it applies to the Edinburgh native @dodoriazarbon too.
I mean, I can accept 'on accident' as a form of language morphing etc - I have genuinely never heard anybody use it prior to today, and I think we're all just a bit surprised by it - but 'I could care less' (when used in the context of you supposedly not caring about something at all) is actually just incorrect, and it would actually hurt my soul to defend it!
My erasure.
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