Re: On prescriptions and misunderstanding: was can/may

Sally Caves scripsit:

> It cuts both ways: one can be prejudiced
> against certain forms of language use that strike others as more honest and
> more democratic, and one can equally be prejudiced against those who bring
> up the rules for received standard forms of writing and speaking in certain
> social and professional venues.
Northrop Frye told the story of going into a store and asking for something
or other.  The guy behind the counter first said "We don't have any" and
then quickly corrected it to "We don't have none".  The second remark, said
Frye, was superior, for "it contained more of what we literary critics call
texture: it meant (a) we don't have any, and (b) you look to me like a
schoolteacher, and nobody's going to catch me talking like one of *those*."
(Quotation from memory)

> "I'd like the venison."
> "Sorry, we're out."
> "Oh rats.  Can I have the quail, then?"
> "We're out of that, too."
> "Well then, gimme the chicken, damn it."
> (Sotto voce from my mother): "Don't be so RUDE!"
> "Whaaa?"
> "You don't EVER say 'gimme' in a fine restaurant!"
*laughter*

--
Andrew Watt on Microsoft:                       John Cowan
"Never in the field of human computing          jcowan@reutershealth.com
has so much been paid by so many                http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to so few!" (pace Winston Churchill)            http://www.reutershealth.com