Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 23, 2013

Hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Why doesn’t that teacher correct their English? It’s “may I.”

I think he made a rash judgement……

“Can I” is perfectly fine English. The “rule” that you must use “may” instead of “can” is arbitrary and made up, having no basis in historical usage.

It may surprise you, but just because a teacher insists on something doesn’t mean it’s true.

The difference between “Can I” and “May I” is in the implication. “Can” implies ability to do whatever; “May” implies asking permission to do whatever.Child: Ma! Can I jump off the roof?Mother: Well… You certainly can, but you should not, and you may not.

It still leads to confusion sometimes. Like when a student asked me “Can you pass me that stapler on the table?”, and I answered “no”. I wasn’t being rude; the stapler was bolted down onto the table to discourage casual theft.

@furrykef “just because a teacher insists on something doesn’t mean it’s true.”

No argument there, as teachers can/may have misconceptions, varying viewpoints, and so on. But you have illustrated one of my own pet peeves about conversational word usage, which is “just because doesn’t mean.” The phrase “just because” is not a noun or a noun phrase, and so cannot/should not be used as the subject of the verb phrase “doesn’t mean.” One might say instead, “The fact that a teacher insists on something doesn’t mean it’s true,” or “A teacher’s insistence on something doesn’t make it true,” or any of several other combinations. I don’t mean to jump on you personally, but just to vent about something I was taught many years ago is a mistake, and which is still a mistake no matter how common it is! *One of my daughter’s teachers was the first person I heard respond to a question like Caulfield’s by saying, “I don’t know, can you?”

The substitute teacher told the kids that if they behaved themselves she’d give them a French lesson.

After a trouble-free hour a child asked, “Can we have our French lesson now?”

“Mais oui!” replied the teacher, enthusiasttically.

“Alright, MAY we have our French lesson now?”

@Jerry Carlson Ha! Good one….

@ Sharuniboy Not sure what incident you’re referring to in your post @ comicssfan, but my neighbor quit her elementary-school teaching job in Thornton, CO just a couple of years ago because she couldn’t stand the administrators’ and teachers’ attitudes toward the children. She wanted to bring writers and other professionals she knew to their Career Day, but these were nixed in favor of military recruiters. ONLY military recruiters. It was stated categorically that these low-income, mostly Hispanic kids would have no shot at any career other than the military, so why waste energy showing them anything else? At that very same time, the Denver School of Science and Technology, with its intense emphasis on college preparation, was graduating low-income Hispanic, black, and white kids (as well as better-off kids) and sending them off to four-year colleges. And they’re doing really well. The assumptions and attitudes of the adults in a school can have a lot to do with how kids shape their own lives.

@bigpuma “If improper usage of a word or phrase becomes widespread enough, it will eventually be considered “accepted” usage.”*That’s for sure, and has been throughout history! It’s interesting to watch the process and weigh in sometimes, though. And there’s no doubt, too, that in general the folks who most enjoy the weighing-in part are us peevish, fuss-budget grammarians, and so we “share” mostly with each other. You might be surprised, though, at how broad the audience actually is. Over the years I’ve enjoyed newspaper columns on language, word usage, and so on by James Kilpatrick, William F. Buckley, William Safire, Ruth Walker, and others. Weighty subjects such as the comma before “and” in a series, and so forth, would be discussed. *A few years ago, there was a very funny book on punctuation that was a best-seller. Here’s Wikipedia:

“Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of BBC Radio 4’s Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and describes how rules are being relaxed in today’s society. Her goal is to remind readers of the importance of punctuation in the English language by mixing humour and instruction.Truss dedicates the book “to the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St. Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution”; she added this dedication as an afterthought after finding the factoid in a speech from a librarian."*“Eats, Shoots and Leaves” describes a gunman in a cafe. “Eats Shoots and Leaves” describes a panda. Punctuation matters!*

A few decades back, there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the fact that dictionaries had, pretty much across the board, stopped acting as authorities on these matters in favor of reflecting current usage without reference to rules or traditional preference. Hence the post from Strod, earlier today, citing a dictionary comment that “can” may’can be used interchangeably with “may.” *P.S. I absolutely love the phrase “peevish fuss-budgets.” Thanks!

just wait to med school. they show everything. rashes, bunions, etc…

Strod: The problem with descriptive, rather than prescriptive, dictionaries. Sure, language changes, but those dictionaries accellarate it rather than preserving the proper.

@bigpuma " I was thinking when I wrote my post of Nathan Bierma"

He’s one I’m not familiar with. The ones I mentioned are all gone now except Ruth Walker, who writes for the Christian Science Monitor. She is most certainly not obsessive, nor does she come across as a know-it-all. (I fervently hope I don’t, either, as I have as little patience with dogmatism as anyone!) She deals mostly (and I do, too, mostly) with those changes that make a difference – that make one stumble over a passage and have to parse it out because it’s worded, constructed, or punctuated in a way that makes it confusing. And that’s the theme of “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.” *BTW, may I gently suggest that “obsessive know-it-alls” is awfully harsh, given the fact that we’re all just exchanging information, thoughts, musings, points of view, and so on? Some of us do believe that there are “standards” to be maintained, and that those standards sometimes involve not just pragmatism (as in, many people use “can” and “may” interchangeably) but also the subtler little grace notes that make the language beautiful, elegant, and clear (“can” involves ability, while “may” involves permission). One can be passionate about an interest without being obsessive; I thonk we can all agree on that (some typos are too cute to fix!).