4 ms·
I'm not a prescriptivist myself. I simply like having useful words, which is something I appreciate about the article in question. So, I like the idea that "ma
by quadrangle 9y ago
I'm not a prescriptivist myself. I simply like having useful words, which is something I appreciate about the article in question.
So, I like the idea that "may" could carry that permissive meaning such that the strictest interpretation is as you suggest. But I don't like it pedantically in practice.
To be clear: "It may rain" isn't a problem because there's no confusion possible. I don't care about stretching words in that way. I just like the idea that the distinction is available for cases where it is meaningful.
If we lose the distinction between "Can I bike there?" and "May I bike there?" our communication suffers.
But "may" is beyond screwy today. Relatedly, although it's fundamentally wrong (not just prescriptively, but like my brain has a bad-syntax error feeling when hearing it), there are places in the U.S. where people say "might could"! See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3211/is-might-could-a-correct-construct https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3211/is-might-co... as on example discussion.
Personally, I'm a non-prescriptivist, non-pedantic, amateur linguist who like people actually thinking about words and using them thoughtfully and intentionally.
- logicallee 9y agoThis was a useful response, thank you. I think I will only correct "may" to "might" if there's a genuine chance for confusion. I like the use of "may" as "possibly". For example it's an easy way to say, "maaaaybe I was." (I may have been.) Whereas "I might have been" is about a conditional - it means something different than "maybe I was". Come to think of it, our very word "maybe" isn't about permission - and it doesn't have the form "mightbe". Still, it is useful to know what prescriptivists think, so thanks for the summary.