My little cousin once asked me, in earnest, “How big of a number is a Brazilian?” She was thirteen at the time. Apparently something similar made it onto MLIA recently, so I felt it was time to put it here.
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January 18th, 2010
189 – Brazilians of People
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Obviously, one brazillion is approximately equal to 192 millions.
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Ah, the fundamental difference between Britain and America… you say “how big of a number”, we just say “how big a number”… also, it’s ‘could NOT care less’, not ‘could care less’. Silly people :p
I forget the exponent for a Brazilian, but Brazil is a great movie.
XD “I can’t figure out how many people a Brazilian is…” Gotta love sound puns…
Yesss! Haha I knew reading MLIA would come in handy some day. 🙂
Lol, thought that quote sounded familiar, yay for MLIA!
I’m American, and I always use “I couldn’t care less”… because “I could care less” is wrong and stupid.
The phrase “I could care less” is incorrect? You don’t say?
I should be so lucky to understand why people are saying this.
Hehe, forgive me, googled that phrase as I knew there was a reason people used it. The reason? Sarcasm!
So please don’t call people who use the phrase stupid, ignorant, silly, etc… call them rude or standoffish if you want to though (I kind of think the phrase “I couldn’t care less” is rude/standoffish myself personally).
What is my point? I don’t know if I have one, never really used the phrase in a serious conversation or the two other phrases I used at the beginning of this post.
I do have a question for Styg though, why is “how big of a number” wrong but “how big a number” isn’t? It sounds like an incomplete sentence the way you say it, but that’s probably just because I’ve always heard it the other way.
The phrase “I couldn’t care less” means that you can’t care less because there is no possible way for you to care less, i.e. you don’t care at all.
Saying “I could care less” seems to suggest that there is the potential to have less care in a subject, i.e. you care to some degree.
So if you’re saying that you don’t care, it would be more correct to say that you couldn’t care less.
Wow, do some people not understand the meaning of sarcasm? Being sarcastic is saying one thing and meaning something completely different, it works best to say it out loud as tone carries the meaning more than the words.
So if someone said “I could care less” in a sarcastic way, it would seem to suggest that there is the potential to have less care in a subject to a person who does not catch the sarcasm, but to those who do catch it, it will become apparent that they have absolutely no interest in the subject and would rather the person who brought it up would just be quiet or go away.
As for the correctness of the statement, if it is merely written out with no clues as to whether it is sarcastic I’ll admit the phrase does not work well except to those who have only heard it used sarcastically. However, in a real life situation there are more clues as to what people mean than merely words.
Eye contact, tone, expression of the face, etc all help to get the point across or in other words communicate. Communication is the point of language is it not? So as long as the audience of the speaker understands that they are being sarcastic I cannot see how someone can say that “I could care less” is “wrong”.
Although, I have the feeling that people who use the phrase do it partly to confuse some of their audience for a laugh or two so the sarcastic meaning is not always that apparent.
Dan, I never said ‘big of a number’ was wrong, I just said it was different ;). And I didn’t say ‘could care less’ was stupid or ignorant… silly, yes, but that’s more of an affectionate thing. I have to be honest though, I’ve never heard it used sarcastically. Not saying it’s not, I just personally happen to have never encountered it used that way.
Ah, understood Styg, as for the stupid/ignorant comment I didn’t believe you thought that, just that some of the other people did. Didn’t help that when I provided an explanation on why people use it and that I don’t think it’s wrong, someone came on and said the phrase was wrong and explained it like I was a little kid who couldn’t understand why the phrase as it is written is incorrect.
Maybe it wasn’t what they were trying to do, or maybe they were just trying to push someone’s buttons. I don’t know, and it’s not like the phrase is precious to me, but sarcasm is how most people explained it when I looked up the phrase. I actually haven’t heard it spoken aloud often (and the few times was when I was a boy so I had yet to hear of sarcasm) so I can’t say whether it really was used sarcastically or whether I’m just trying to apply logic to a logic less phrase.
I just think that people who argue a way of speaking is incorrect need to learn to be more accepting of other people’s differences (not like you Styg, like some people in forums I know who say people who spell “armour” as “armor” are dumb).
Yeah, ask them what they mean if their way of communication is so scrambled you can’t understand them but otherwise relax a bit and realize that language is different from country to country and that in the US it even differs from state to state.
I am a Brazilian and I find this comic hilarious.