Which would be great if it was ever used that way, which I don’t believe it was.
People used to say, “couldn’t care less.” But they are lazy and shortened it.
Obvious misstatement in my last post: “Can” means “to be able to.” “May” means “to have permission to.” (Missed the edit window.)
The tangled web of lies extends further than merely Can’s sordid ambiguity, however. That deceptive May, all prim innocence on the outside, has some skeletons in her own closet as well. To wit:
“He may do that.”
Has permission been given, or is the speaker stating a potential future action?
What a twist!
There, in the shadows, lurks the true victim of this mess; Might! May, that trollop, accused Can of stealing her spotlight while simultaneously kicking Might out of the way and taking his place in the language!
Can this be resolved? Might this be resolved? May this be resolved? Tune in tomorrow, same Ambigutime, same Ambiguchannel.
Why, yes, I am avoiding work. Why do you ask?
I’m just saying, inaccurate information is inaccurate, whether you give it to an adult, a child, or nobody at all.
Ok, sorry. Although I thought you might care to know what my intent with mentioning it was nonetheless.
It’s as wrong and irrational as trying to maintain a “will”/“shall” distinction in modern American English; just about nobody really follows it, not even most of the people who might claim they do (sure, they’ll occasionally consciously remember the adopted rule, from time to time, but most of the time, most people when naturally speaking will speak the way most people naturally speak (see Themenin’s post)), and a few individuals’ idiosyncratic attempts at redefinition mean diddly-squat without broader support in their speech community.
My mention of “can vs. may nitpickery” which you are responding to was made in defense of my mention of “irrational hangups”, which, if you’ll check, was in reference to “schoolmarmish lectures”. Presumably, they are an example of nitpickery.
I don’t know. Heaven forbid the occasional contrived ambiguity, easily resolved in any actual conversation where it would occur. But even adopting your can vs. may distinction, nothing is essentially fixed. I can still say “She may bake a cake”. Does that mean she has permission to or that the possibility exists that she will? (Bosstone, of course, made this point immediately above.)
People pull off separation of professional jargon and linguistic standards from non-professional speech all the time. I know this because technical writers and lawyers rarely sound in conversation like technical manuals or legal papers.
Well, that would be an inaccurate impression they’ve trained themselves to receive. But, I doubt they actually notice it, most of the time. It’s simply too common, in educated speech as much as anywhere else, for them to be constantly getting vibes of uneducation off of it. No, they probably notice it one time out of fifty and don’t realize all the times it slipped by undetected.
Well, even preventing your own children from doing it is utterly pointless. Of course, one is free to engage in whatever silliness they want with their own children; there’s nothing morally wrong with trying to instill a distinction nobody else follows, but it’s just as pointless as trying to get your child to draw a distinction between “funny” for “odd” and “humorous” for “jocular”. Like I said before, it’s worth nothing if almost nobody else in their speech community does so, and it won’t really take, besides. But feel free to try.
(I think all this mention of parenting makes the discussion more emotionally charged than it should be)
Yes, yes it does. Can we just leave parenting out of this. this pit is solely against people who correct other “adult” peoples grammar during casual conversation, or on message boards, such as this one. Please, carry on now.
Of course, Jodi says she never corrects other adults’ grammar. Which is good, of course. But she still seems to think they are engaging in “misuse”, failing to observe proper or useful distinctions, etc. She just mostly keeps quiet about it. That’s commendable, but I think there’s room in this thread for some fighting of the linguistic ignorance, even if it is silent and harmless. I wish the discussion didn’t come off as personal, that we could have it dryly and academically, and I apologize for my failings in this regard.
Jodi, I think one of the reasons you two feel to be talking past each other is that you said:
“Once again, your kids will be victims to any number of “school marmish” lectures, many of them – including this one – defensible.”
To which Indistinguishable said:
“I suppose we may agree on everything except the defensibility of inaccurate schoolmarmish lectures”
your response:
“A) There is nothing “inaccurate” about drawing a distinction between “can” and “may”.”
Now, see how he thought you might have been talking about correcting adults? Because the phrase “including this one” seems to indicate that you are now correcting an adult and that is defensible. We, of course, now know that you don’t correct adults.
Another misunderstanding is that neither myself nor Indistinguishable (I assume) ever meant to imply that you should change how you talk. In that case, we would be guilty of the sin (prescriptivism) that we are decrying.
I really am trying to resolve things, not make them more confusing, I swear. Must be penance for starting my participation in this thread so snarkily
I don’t note the irony, Indistinguishable.
I think that comment was odd, if fact. You were referring to people who go around in everyday life, correcting grammar wherever they see it being abused!
Plynck thinks that is the same as chiming in on a message board, in the pit, on topic, with your opinion? Odd.
I’m not sure how many different ways I can say this: Matters of opinion are not subject to judgments of accuracy. There is nothing “inaccurate” about using “can/may” precisely and maitaining the distinction between the two. That is not wrong, incorrect, false, or any other synonym you might choose for “inaccurate.” So – once again – unless you can show that maintaining the “can/may” distinction is wrong – and if so, let’s see some proof, and “lots of people do it” isn’t proof – you can stop presenting YOUR opinion as the only correct one, when it isn’t.
We’re talking about “may/can” not “will/shall.” And you keep saying and saying and saying that it’s “wrong” and “irrational,” but you have absolutely no proof for that, it’s all just your O, which is worth about as much as a fart in the wind to a person who disagrees with you.
This is an excellent example of how you are basically having a conversation with yourself – YOU use “nitpickery” to respond to “irrational hangups” – YOUR term – in reference to “schoolmarmish lectures” – YOUR term again. None of it responds to anything I said. So shall I just leave you alone to argue with yourself?
The fact that further ambiguity may exist is not actually an argument for imprecision. We make it as precise as we can; we don’t say “the hell with it” if we can’t make it perfectly precise in every respect in every context. Did you have a response that actually answered my assertion that the “may/can” distinction has utility and therefore is not irrational?
The fact that people are sometimes required to segregate technical speech from personal speech is not actually an argument for unnecessarily making such chasms wider. Again, I was pointing out that distinguishing between “may” and “can” is not just useful but required in many professions and therefore is not irrational. Did you have a response to that?
Who are “they” and on what basis do you assert what “they” notice, and how frequently? On what basis do you state that this is “an inaccurate impression they’ve trained themselves to receive”? You have quite a few bald assertions, but I see very little to back it up.
Says you. I’ve already listed reasons to maintain the distinction. You haven’t actually answered them. And I think training your kids to understand the difference between “funny” and “odd” is actually a great example; in my world, those words are rarely synonyms, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t join you in raising kids who cannot appreciate nuance of meaning because they’ve never been taught that such a thing exists.
Not for me, it doesn’t. I don’t have kids. What exasperates me is the fact that speech choice is so obviously a matter of STYLE, of personal preference, and therefore obviously of opinion, yet you insist on presenting your opinion as “correct” and others’ as “inaccurate”. I’m bothered when people can’t distinguish between opinion and fact, though, hell, for all I know that’s another of those “irrational” distinctions you’ve decided to dispense with.
And there is quite literally no way you could claim your opinion is correct and mine is “linguistic ignorance” in a way that I would not personalize. I enjoy being called ignorant about as much as the average person, which is to say not at all. So here’s the deal: You come up with some proof that maintaining the distinction between “may” and “can” is not just old-fashioned, but is in fact objectively incorrect and/or irrational, or I will assume that the difference between “opinion” and “fact” is one you are simply too ignorant to grasp.
. . . . Clearly talking about kids . . .
. . . . Not limiting his response to the set I was clearly talking about (kids) and further adding the contention that a “schoolmarmish lecture” in this subject is perforce “irrational.”
No. I fail to see how it could possibly be read that way when what I said is “Your kids will be victims to any number of “school marmish” lectures, many of them – including this one – defensible.” How is it reasonable to infer I am here talking about adults, when I clearly said kids, and not just “kids” generally, but “your [own] kids”?
And why didn’t you know that at Post 80, where I said “But I am no fan of correcting other adults’ language. It’s six kinds of rude”?
No, he or she just wants to tell me I’m incorrect, irrational, and ignorant to speak as I do.
I appreciate that. And I have no quarrel with you. 
But I am irritated in every subject – not just grammar – when people try to beat me over the head with their opinion, dressing it up as if it were fact. I offered to agree to disagree, assuming s/he would agree that (a) kids are lectured by their parents on lots of things, but (b) correcting other adults is rude – and please tell me what is objectionable about either of those “conditions.” But hell no; s/he’d rather continue to insist that s/he is correct and anyone disagreeing with him/her is wrong. So let’s see the proof of that.
No.
Umgawa.
Then, Jodi, what was the antecedent to “this one” in post 86? Doesn’t that refer to the school marmish lecture you are presumably giving to Indistinguishable, who is presumably not a kid? I’m just saying that’s how I read it, and I was trying to show there was an honest misunderstanding, at least in that point, at least for me. I thought it odd at the time, given your post #80, but there you go, a misunderstanding.
Let me back off of and apologize for my previous use of loaded terminology and be more precise about what I’m saying, since, as Jamaika a jamaikaiaké notes, I have no desire for you to change your natural way of speaking or contempt for whatever that natural way is. I really do want to take the animosity down a notch.
My position is that idiosyncratically holding a “can”/“may” distinction is like idiosyncratically holding a “funny”(meaning odd)/“jocular”(meaning humorous). If that’s how your natural speech is, it’s a bit odd that it should be so at odds with more popular convention, but there’s nothing ethically/morally/factually/whateverly wrong with it. It’s certainly odd, though (unless, of course, a “can”/“may” distinction is actually the norm in your particular speech community). People who don’t hold to this odd deviation from the norm are not being sloppy in ignoring it; it’s no more a rule that has any relevance to their lives than the made-up one distinguishing “funny” from “jocular”. It would be factually incorrect to claim that such a deviation from the norm was, in fact, the accurate definition for everybody, or something like that, but as long as one steers clear of that, one isn’t doing anything wrong. It’s just an odd idiosyncracy. But we all have some of those. So, whatever.
Well, of course we’re not talking about “will/shall”; I was drawing an analogy. As for “wrong” and “irrational”, I am dropping all those terms. I apologize for using them. What I mean to say is that it’s an abnormal practice with little relevance to how people actually speak English and personally adopting it will do nothing to change that. But there is an empirical claim here and you can call me out on it. The burden is on me to demonstrate that people generally have no problem with using “can” for permission. That is something for which I must produce evidence, unless you already accept that claim.
I was afraid you might say that. You said you never advocated for nitpickery and called me out for it. But the context in which I mentioned nitpickery was in response to your saying that schoolmarmish lectures like those on the “can”/“may” distinction were defensible. It’s true that I introduced the term “schoolmarmish lectures”, but what of it? You said they could be defensible; I went on from there.
Well, alright. Supposing I advocate the following of a distinction in the English language between “may” as in “May I please have some cake?” and “mape” as in “It mape rain tomorrow”. Thus, “She may bake a cake” would denote permission to bake while “She mape bake a cake” would denote possibility of baking. Would this distinction have utility? I’m dropping the terminology of “irrational”, but would it be silly to push for this distinction?
If it’s troubling that “mape” is not an existing English word, what if I just pushed for always replacing possibility-“may” with “might” or some other word, so that one must say “It might rain tomorrow” or “She might bake a cake” for discussion of possibility, reserving “She may bake a cake” for permission to bake. Would this proscription have utility? Would it be silly to push for it? How would you respond to people who advocated it?
My response was that its ostensible usefulness in some narrow professional contexts was not a strong argument for advocating it as a conversational rule. If people do find that it’s something useful to them conversationally, though, they may start using it conversationally. I have nothing personally against it; I just wouldn’t pretend it is a distinction which already exists in conversation. It may eventually; language changes, but mostly not through conscious rulemaking/rule-following.
“They” was the people you referred to in your sentence “To many people who continue to believe that ‘can’ and ‘may’ mean different things, and should be used accordingly, misusing one for the other sounds uneducated.” But you are right to call me out on this; I need to bring more evidence for this claim.
In my world, they’re rarely synonyms too, though it happens. But it would definitely be odd to pretend “funny” means “odd” while “jocular” is the only correct term for “humorous”. Don’t you agree? You’d probably want to preserve the fact that “funny” means humorous, because that’s how most people speak. Well, for a similar reason, I see nothing wrong with accepting that “can” can refer to permission, since that’s how most people speak.
I think kids are perfectly well able to appreciate nuance of meaning without any explicit instruction. I think people, from middle-school dropouts to college professors, are marvelously fluent in their native languages without any explicit education. The main influence on one’s skills with language is simply one’s exposure to and participation with it.
I apologize again for all my needlessly aggressive terminology. It was foolish of me to use it. And, again, I do not have any problem with the way you personally speak; I will at most say “How odd… if you’re doing that with conscious effort, perhaps you should just relax and speak naturally, and if not… how odd”. I only want to cut off any claims that such personal idiosyncracies have any wider applicability; that others are in some sense misspeaking or engaging in misuse or making mistakes or being sloppy or whatever by not drawing the particular “can”/“may” distinction we’ve been discussing.
Indeed, if it’s nuance of meaning you want, perhaps that’s in support of the ability to use both “can” and “may” for permission. There may be subtle connotational differences between uses of permission-“can” and uses of permission-“may” which people grasp intuitively even if they can’t explicitly put their finger on it.
When I go back to check threads sometimes I see some pretty ugly mistakes I make. Maybe there’s something to that grammer thing. Good thing I’m handy with tools and whatnot.
I wasn’t presuming to give anyone a lecture. I meant “this one” as in this lecture, this topic, given to your kids. And the very next sentence reads “and lecturing other adults is rude in almost every case.”
I have been carried away into some of this head-beating, and I apologize; it’s not an effective tactic and it’s not a courteous one. I do believe that there is an objective factual support for my position in some of the areas where we disagree, but nonetheless, I have been unnecessarily prickly about it.
I agree with both of those statements; they are both true statements (or, at least (a) is factually true and my judgement is to concur with (b)). But just because kids are in fact lectured by their parents on lots of things doesn’t mean none of those lectures deserve scrutiny. A “can”/“may” distinction lecture, in particular, is one I think would be silly and not useful.
Well, I do believe I am correct, that is true. That is inherent in my having a position. And similarly, I believe those who disagree, those who hold contradictory positions, are wrong. Again, that is inherent in my having a position. That’s not something to apologize for. But I have been a bit tactless in my defense of those positions, perhaps rude at times, and for that I apologize.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying here. Are you responding to a feeling that some of us don’t think there’s any use to grammar, or perhaps that we don’t think there’s any such thing as grammar?
If so, I never said there was no such thing as grammar. My position is that there are legitimate rules of grammar, which people generally follow and instinctively recognize violations of; even if there are occasional speech errors, editing errors, etc., these can be naturally spotted on sober reflection. These are the rules even middle-school dropouts follow, things preventing them from saying “The man dog bites in” in place of “The man was bitten by a dog”. When it comes to spoken language, these rules are pretty much learned by all native speakers to fluency with no explicit instruction at all.
Then there are rules that are made-up, contrived, have little relation to how people actually speak. Ones that people actually can be ignorant of because one can only learn them with explicit instruction from on high, since they have no relation to real-world speech. The ones that give rise to the game of grammar gotcha. And for these I have no use.
If I’ve entirely misinterpreted the reason for your post, then ignore me. (Well, let me know about the misinterpretation, and then ignore me)
Okay, thank you.
This pre-supposes there is anything idiosncratic about using the distinction, which there isn’t. You can consider it “odd” if you like; I seriously doubt anyone cares.
It is NOT an indiosycracy. It is an established use. It’s like you can’t make an argument without starting from the conclusion you want to reach.
Y’know, from “wrong” to “abnormal” is pretty much a lateral move. :dubious:
I freely accept it. I never said some people don’t conflate “can/may”; lots of people do. I said that choosing NOT to do so is not “odd,” abnormal," “idiosncratic,” or any of the above. It is a choice that many people make.
You know, recourse to a hypothetical is not a response to my pointing out that the distinction between “may” and “can” has obvious utility, in that it is more precise than conflating the two. For the third time, do you deny the utility of distinguishing between “is able to” and “has permission to”?
First, professionally speaking, the usefulness is not ostensible, it’s actual. Secondly, I have never advocated it as a conversational rule for anyone except myself – and I have defended the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, including how they speak.
Again, assertions without any proof. The distinction already exists. It’s not as if it’s coming into the language; if anything, it’s fading from the language. You’ve somehow switched your stance to implying that the distinction is an innovation; it isn’t, it already exists: Cite; Cite; Cite. Note that I am not saying that conflating “may” and “can” is wrong; I’m just saying that failing to do so is not wrong, either.
Fine. Accept it. I have no problem with that unless or until you are deciding that every other person, making that choice for themselves, MUST make the same decision that you have and dispense with the distinction.
I appreciate your apology, but I am nonetheless struck by your inability to dispense from value judgments: “How odd,” you say. “If only you would relax and speak naturally . . . .” Here’s a news flash: I’m perfectly relaxed and the distinction between “may” and “can” is one I more or less naturally draw, to the extent any language choice is natural, and with the admission I don’t draw it religiously.
You have not shown that the usage is an idiosyncrasy. And some people may believe that failing to draw that distinction IS sloppy. Since that is an opinion, you are not in a position to say they are wrong.