Can I, May I ...?

[Moonhead]

What's the difference btween saying 'Please can I be excused from the table' and 'Please May I be excused from the table?' When I was young, we used to have to ask to leave the table after a meal (and rightly so!) but whereas my Mum and Dad taught us to say, please Can i, when we'd go to our grandparents house, my Grandad would always expect us to say 'Please MAY i,' and said this was the correct way. I just wondered if there is a correct/more polite way, or if it doesnt really matter...? Hope you get what I mean! Thanks.

[thekraut]

IMGO, may is considered more polite than can. and if you say can I..., somebody like Bob... might say something like "surely, provided you've got legs" ha ha. but maybe someone from the pedantic league might want to comment on this (as usual)

[woofgang]

"May I" asks permission, "Can I" enquires whether you have the necessary abilities to do so or whether the action is possible...so, unless you are asking whether you have been unchained from your chair, then "may I" is correct.....yup, I am a founder member of the TOGs pedantic League

[rinkytink]

Exactly thekraut.

Everyone can leave the table but whether they may leave the table is a different matter.

[rinkytink]

Sorry that should have been....

Exactly thekraut.

Everyone can leave the table but whether they may leave the table is a different matter.

[Quizmonster]

The plain fact is that - except in circumstances in which formality is an overriding consideration (dining with the Queen or an archbishop, say?) -'can' has been as acceptable as 'may' when asking permission since the middle of the 19th century!

Oh, I'm well aware that one's grandparents might have insisted on the formal 'may', but they probably never actually used it themselves when out of earshot of the children who had to be taught how to behave 'correctly'!

[thekraut]

I think you're not completely right there, QM. 'Can' is only an equivalent to may if you add 'please' at the end. Or at least that's what some english guy told me, the ignorant german.

[rinkytink]

When dining at my table formality is always an overriding consideration.

[dml54]

An English teacher of mine when asked "Can you repeat the question?" would reply, "Yes" and carry on talking. We finally got the message. A teacher in Junior School would always say " 'Can and got are Tommy Rot".

[poadster]

Spelling

[JohnPPotts]

You mean there's a League of pedants? Where can i join? And can we have Lynn Truss (author of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" - which includes the quote "Sticklers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion - and you probably didn't have much of that to begin with") as our honorary President?

[Hippy]

JohnPotts, with refernece to the words "qoute" and "quotation". Your use, as in "which includes the quote " should more correctly be, "which includes the quotation" as "quote" is a verb ("to quote the previous speaker") and "quotation is a noun ("that was a qoutation from Shakespeare" and "to receive your free written qotation just ring this number")

So, your application to join the Chartered Roll of Articulated Pedantry is defered until such time as at the end of the day, when the playing field returns to Eaton, and the fat lady ululates, unti this unique once in a lifetime opprtunity returns.

[Hippy]

Now, more correctly ...

JohnPotts, with reference to the words "qoute" and "quotation". Your use, as in "... which includes the quote ..." should more correctly be, "... which includes the quotation ..." as "quote" is a verb ("... to quote the previous speaker ...") and "quotation is a noun ("That was a quotation from Shakespeare." and "To receive your free written quotation just ring this number ...")

So, your application to join the Chartered Roll of Articulated Pedantry (acronym optional) is deferred until such time as at the end of the day, when the playing field returns to Eaton, and the fat lady ululates, and this unique once in a lifetime opportunity returns again.

[JohnPPotts]

Actually, now I think of it, I shouldn't have said either quote OR quotation, as that would imply she was quoting somebody else: I should have said "to quote the blurb on the back" (although "blurb" is probably not correct English).

[Quizmonster]

I have this wonderful vision, based on the answer above, of Rinkytink's children - he or she may, of course not have any, but that needn't prevent the vision - at the dinner-table. They invariably carefully pass the port decanter to the left at all times, never allowing it to touch the table until it has returned to the top! The girls, naturally, are all wearing elbow-length gloves and their shoulders are covered, of course, not bare. Before coming into the dining-room, they have all been sipping sherry and conversing politely in the ante-room. And so on. What a lucky parent to get away with this sort of thing in this day and age!

(PS I'm only joking, R, not having a go at you.)

[rinkytink]

And quite right too QM.

Here we all are having a little light supper yesterday evening. Of course we have toned things down a little (being mid-week) - the best cutlery only comes out at weekends these days.

That's me at the front cuffing my youngest for incorrect usage of 'can I' and 'may I'.

http://www.mdhs.org/library/Familyparty23f.JPG

[Quizmonster]

Wonderful, R! Thank you for that.