This is a minor observation I’ve noticed that seemingly only older people have a grasp on.
For example:
Can I see your boobies? = Bad
May I see your boobies? = Good
May I fit the square peg in the round hole? = Bad
Can I fit the square peg in the round hole? = Good
Personally, I’m 36 and I can’t remember even once being corrected by one of my English teachers for the improper use of the term “May I” or “Can I”.
Not counting this thread, I think I can count on one hand, how many times I’ve actually used the term: “May I”.
So how about you my fellow Dopers? Was this an issue with you when you were growing up? If so, what is your age? (If you don’t mind sharing that information.)
For what godly reason do you feel the need to perpetuate this silly and clearly untrue “rule”, even at the cost of being annoying and a tiny bit rude to your students?
I’m younger than you are and got plenty of “I don’t know, can you?” and “you can, I’ve seen you do it before” from my teachers and my parents - with big implied hints that I was asking the wrong question and the conversation would not go forward until I asked if I might.
To take umbrage at “gimme” is perfectly fair; it really is a command conveying a possibly undeserved sense of entitlement.
To invent offense at using “can” for permission, however, is another thing entirely: that’s just being willfully ignorant about how the English language works; to anyone who ever feels the need to criticize people for their supposed ignorance in using “can” this way, realize that, far from it, such speakers are actually demonstrating fluency with English speech, while it is you who are demonstrating ignorance, or, more precisely, miseducation.
We also played “Mother, May I” when I was little (which, come to think of it, is a really stupid game) and that definitely reinforced “may” goes with permission.
Honestly, doesn’t everyone think teachers who say this are being pricks? I don’t give kids a hard time about this “rule” because I think it’s undignified that kids have to ask permission to go to the bathroom in the first place (though they do have to), and I don’t want to make it more annoying or demeaning for them.
I’m always reminded of the scene from “Shawshank Redemption” where Red says he can’t even piss a drop without permission. I felt the same way when I was in school. I was a teacher’s aide to a horrible woman that made it so difficult for children to go to the bathroom we had one very shy girl end up peeing her pants TWICE rather than ask the old shrew.
May I go to the bathroom with a smidgeon of dignity?
Yes, I can.
May we teach our children manners in more productive ways?
I use sir, ma’am, please, may I, even a few pretty pleases. I refuse to believe I live in a world where the pleasantries of life are too “uptight.”
And to think, my mothers big thing was the word “was.” It’s WAAZ! not WUZ! She also distinguishes between a Palm-etto tree and a PAL-metto bug.
It drives me crazy to hear people get on others’ cases about allegedly confusing may and can; as we all know from observation, people using ‘may’ “properly” sound like prigbots (though those under 60 get a pass).
Uhm, I think it’s not about learning “manners”. It’s about learning the difference between being able and it being right. Which is an important part of something that when I was little was taken for granted but which currently gets its own course :rolleyes: : “citizenship training”
In Spanish the dialogue was:
K: “Señorita, ¿puedo ir al baño?” (Teacher, can I go to the bathroom?)
T: “Bueno, como poder puedes.” (Strictly speaking you can)
K: if very young, knows something is amiss but not exactly what… if old enough: “¿Me deja ir al baño?” or “¿Tengo permiso para ir al baño?” (May I go to the bathroom?)
T: “Sí, vete.” (Yes, you may) or “Sí, por favor ve.” (Yes, please go)
Nowadays, Mom is perfectly able to grab any of her children just as we’re placing our hand on the bathroom door and we’ll ask “¿se puede ir al baño en esta santa casa o hace falta permiso del Papa?” (is it acceptable to go to the bathroom in this holy of holies or do I need the Pope’s permission?)
It wasn’t for the bathroom - it was for everything “Can I get more juice?”, “Can I go outside?”, “Can I play with ____?”, things a child would legitimately have to ask permission to do at that moment. So, no, not being pricks by trying to teach me the difference between the two words, or at least no more than when they tried to break me of using “me” as a subject.
I had the rotten misfortune of being born into a family of hicks that placed zero importance on anything of intellectual value. And even to this day, as a middle age guy, I’m still suffering and struggling because of it. (Didn’t even know that my own name was Michael until I was 11 and my foster mother at the time called me into the house one day to explain the difference between Mike and Michael, and how it was the latter that mattered most because it was on my birth certificate. Up until then I always thought I was just plain old “Mike” and didn’t even know how to spell Michael.)
I like it that someone would point this “may I” and “can I” stuff out, as now I will try and be mindful of it and not make the mistake (as I’ve done so often heretofore).
The one that I hear a lot, and is even done by bigshots in the news media all the time, is the use of “are” instead of “our.” Example: “Sir, can you give us some clue as to when we can start to pull are troops out of Iraq?”
Interesting. Although I recognise there is a difference in strict, formal terms appreciated by people who know the technical workings of the language, ‘can I?’ is and has been used so commonly throughout my life by everyone around me that I’ve never known a problem with it.
Until I went to Denmark on a business trip. Nearly everyone out there seems to speak excellent English, but the (mis)use of ‘can I?’ to mean ‘may I?’ doesn’t seem to be known there* - so I found myself asking “Please can I have one of those cakes” (in shops and cafes) and being told “Yes, you can”, but with no subsequent action to give it to me, and unlike when English teachers do this to prove a point, they were completely in earnest - it seems they just thought I was enquiring if the items were truly for sale.
I think this might be partly because of the proper distinction in English and partly because of the way things are asked for in the Danish language - I think they say something equivalent to “I want”, but it isn’t rude or pushy as it might be in English.
Language is fluid. Every generation, every subculture, and every speaker of a given language brings their own beliefs and biases into it and it becomes a different animal altogether. The rules of a language aren’t the arbitrary prescriptions forced upon it, they’re the result of an organic process.
Using “can I” for permission isn’t a “mistake”, it’s a correct usage becuase it fits perfectly into the American English system and everyone understands what it means. To teach people otherwise is to miss the point: it’s inappropriate to ask for something at, say, a job interview by saying “Can I get…?” But it’s just as inappropriate to go around enforcing imaginary rules in other situations. Think about it this way: the outfit you’d wear to a job interview is way different from the one you’d wear to a barbeque, but that doesn’t mean one is “right” and the other is “wrong”. It’s absolutely vital to know how to dress for an interview, but you’d get rather funny looks in this country if you went around telling people it’s “wrong” to wear a T-shirt to a barbeque.
As for people “pronouncing ‘our’ as ‘are’”, that’s not a “mistake”, either, that’s a feature of a regional dialect. Specifically, most Californians don’t have the sound GuyNblueJeans is thinking of in “our”–the same way that the rest of you don’t know how to make all the sounds necessary to speak Norwegian, our version of the language just doesn’t have the vowel sound that other Americans use in “our” and we pronounce it like the vowel in “are”. That’s not “wrong”, it’s just how the language is spoken in this dialect. Since LA has such a massive influence on TV and film in this country, you’re going to run into the dialect a lot. It’s no more “wrong” than your dialect is–but I could just as easily fly to wherever you live and go around telling everyone “‘our’ rhymes with ‘are’, damnit! What’s wrong with you people?”
Edit: I just realized that GuyNblueJeans may be saying that “our” is supposed to be pronounced like “hour”. Whoops! I was thinking of “caught”. Pretty much the same argument applies anyway, even if the specifics don’t line up the way I intended them to.
The way we actually speak English, people who say “may” sound pretentious and affected. Why would I insist on it with my students? Plus, it’s bad enough that they have to ask permission to pee, which is embarrassing anyway; I don’t need to play games with them before granting it.
…My mom used to be such a smart ass about this one…now I am too… 
, or 