Grammar lesson, #42: Permission vs. Ability

[hyphenate]

A simple one. May means permission to do something, can means ability to do it.

You're sitting in class, and you have to go to the bathroom, REALLY badly. You raise your hand, the teacher notices, and you ask" "Can I go to the bathroom?"

The right answer, from an alert teacher is, "I don't know whether you CAN go to the bathroom, but you MAY go to the restroom if you so wish." CAN=ability. It means the actual ability to do something.

Let's say you want to plan a hike, but you just had a leg amputated. Do you still have the ability to hike? If you are able to walk on crutches, or have a prosthetic limb, you probably CAN hike. If you don't have a walking aid, or are still in the hospital, or if there is some other hindrance, you don't have the ability to do this. So you CAN'T do it.

If you wanted to plan a hike in an Audobon park, and it has hiking trails for the public, you might have the permission of the park to hike there. Therefore, you MAY hike there.

On the other hand, if it's a private estate and there are many signs saying "Private Property, Keep Out," you do NOT have permission to hike there. Therefore, you MAY NOT hike there.

There are, as usual, exceptions to this rule, but use your best judgement.

[Jane Austin]

1. How about "kin"?

As in "Kin I be 'scused?"

:)

[Captain Hilts]

3. If you have to ax.....nt

[Jane Austin]

5. Heeeee! ............ n/t

[hyphenate]

9. Only if it's Tuesday, at night, in a blue moon. eom

[Captain Hilts]

2. Yes. Similar for 'might' and 'may'. One is the indefinite, the other permission. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. No, 'may' is also the indefinite

but a different tense. 'Might' is for uncertainty in the past, 'may' in the present.

"Wearing the seat belt may have saved his life" = "he is alive; perhaps wearing the seat belt kept him alive"
"Wearing the seat belt might have saved his life" = "he is dead; if he had been wearing the seat belt, perhaps it would have kept him alive"

[hyphenate]

14. You're correct

too many people also don't put enough thought into what they're saying or writing. They will blame "colloquialisms" on their departure from good grammar when they are speaking, but there is far less rationale when they are writing. When I see some of the spelling that is posted online, I can't help but wonder if some of these people ever learned to spell in the first place! I remember in high school we had to keep flash cards for the new "words of the week" and needed to know spelling, definition, and cases in which the word could be used. It might sound strange, but I've always been proud of my high vocabulary! As a writer, I enjoy the fact that I have synonyms to work with, instead of using the same word 20 times in an essay.

[OKNancy]

4. Isn't the preferred spelling

judgment?

[Captain Hilts]

6. That's American. JudgEment is English. Both are correct, though w/o the 'e' is preferred.

For some reason, I usually spell it with the e.

But it's a defense vs. defence thing.

[hyphenate]

8. I use "judgement"

only because my parents are/were both Canadian, and I spell the British way sometimes. Also, here in Massachusetts, especially in the Boston area, a lot of street names and buildings, for instance, are spelled the British way. It's just as easy for me to spell "center" as centre, and "theater" as theatre.

[Captain Hilts]

10. I lived in Toronto for 4+ years. Dad was born in Brighton, Mum's dad in Liverpool.

So, the Englishisms come naturally to me, but I hold onto the 'e' in judgement because it looks right to me.

Centre/center I use both ways.

Now, 'Yonge' street STILL looks silly to me! THAT's a word that needs a 'u'!

[bluerum]

7. How about "may I go to the can?"

[hyphenate]

11. I don't know

A can can be awfully small to go in it.

You may also go to:

the loo
the head
the WC (or "water closet")
the outhouse
the restroom
the toilet


Or a bunch of other synonyms!

[Igel]

12. Yet, in English, originally power versus knowledge.

When "can" stopped meaning "know how to" the battle was lost. That was long before the cutting edge, liberal, critical-thinkers in the 1700s decided on what "can" and "may" must mean for all the native speakers who really don't speak English and need the enlightenment of others.

Of course, being ignorant of distinctions in modality-deontic vs epistemic, for instance, they made ridiculous utterances. We just don't cite the truly asinine ones. For example, they had no way to make sense out of the wisdom in the common usage of "can" and "may" and their past tenses.

You did know "can" and "may" and even "will" have preterites? Ah. Most English speakers don't. But they use them as such when the syntax requires (the psychological reality of paradigms has often been questioned and never shown to exist). Of course, they use the preterites with other, non-preterite meanings, as well. Language change. The grammarians centuries ago couldn't deal with change long past in their day, and in their attempt to be very linguistically and socially conservative committed some real howlers. Of course, we must speak reverently of such howlers, because they are sanctified by time and fools.

And three hundred years later liberal, cutting edge, self-avowed critical thinkers are still held in thrall to them.

Listen to Chomsky. He may have his head up his butt on some linguistic matters (that entire idea of an idealized community of speakers with the same linguistic system--LOL!). Still, he recognized the primacy of the spoken word and of native speaker judgments. As more than one linguist jocularly said, Standard English as codified by the Prescriptivists was not a human language.

It's also wise to listen to sociolinguists. Many are advocates, with not just their heads but also their shoulders up their butts. But the social structure of language and how it patterns into competing, contextual norms that make use of a rich palette of styles and registers--the entire idea enough to send a Prescriptivist into apoplexy--is well known, cross-linguistically universal, and really, really nifty. Embrace diversity.

[hyphenate]

16. I do find that elegance in language doesn't necessarily

mean overly complex language. While a healthy vocabulary can be a palette for a richer painting of words, the imagery can be seen with much smaller words as well. Witness Ernest Hemingway, who wrote a lot in short sentences, with non-complex words to convey his meaning. We can look to John Steinbeck as well--authors who chronicled death, dying and living in their novels, whose blunt, unadorned writing showed that flowery language was not needed to invoke strong, real characters and situations.

However, many people will miss out on some works over several hundreds of years, it is true. One might not want to tackle Shakespeare without a translation of 16th century English, for example, or find joy with John Milton, read the satire of Jonathan Swift or the works of the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, or so many others.

We have a great need to preserve the words of so many, through so many different eras. We can be thankful, say, for the ability to translate Sir Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example, as one of the most noted early English writing, or for the many tomes of ancient Greece and Rome, or those of other parts of civilizations in ancient times. Must we also, sadly, rely on mere handfuls of scholars who have the ability to translate many of the works of the 20th century in a few hundred years? When language has deteriorated to words without vowels, or words compressed to only several consonants, as though writing was suddenly once again the playing field of stenographers or shorthand experts?

Surely, we won't be in that place, of limited understanding, or misinterpretation of language! I hope we can impress upon our youth that language is going to another world, where the stories are as bold or as real as the imagination! Where we can bring our own lives, and interact with classic heroes or dreadful antagonists. Where nowhere is there anything less than what we can dream about and hold in our mind's eye! I can only hope that I will be able to see some of that world unfold.

[PatSnow]

15. Thank you. Amazing how we forget things

that we really should know. Or, perhaps, just too lazy to follow?

And now I need to find the first 41 lessons...

[hyphenate]

17. You're not likely to find

41 previous lessons, I fear!

In this case, the # is a humorous allusion to "Life, the Universe and Everything" as 42 is the answer!

You might find about three or four such lessons, however, though they go back sparingly over four or five years or more. At one point, I had hopes of many more such lessons, but finding time and energy has kept that ambition from reaching fruition.