Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Only common in USA which is < 6% of the world. I've never actually heard it, even when I was in the USA. Only read it in a few USA books.
Note loads of countries have non-USA English as common 2nd language, apart from the obvious English speaking ones. The EU still has two officially English speaking countries, Ireland and Malta.
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Yes, only 6% of the world at large. But, when you consider people with English as a first language (~400M), it's closer to 80% (335M/400M). Since the idiom is an English language one that seems closer to accurate.
Considering English as a second language, 335M/2000M, it's still about 3x the 6% value. And I would guess that many of that 2B people have learned their English based on US English given the prevalence of Hollywood.
I've heard it both ways and both are fairly common in my corner of the US. I rarely see it used in writing in either form though. It would be weird to see "I could care less" written out though. I would expect most people to look at it and realize it's weird when they don't think about it when spoken.