A recent cartoon in the Los Angeles Times showed a punkish teenager saying to a more conventional youth, ‘I’m bored. Can I shave your head?’ Ho, ho.
But then the paper published a letter from ‘Merrill’ from Nova Scotia saying, ‘Would you please explain why nobody here knows the difference between can and may? In Nova Scotia, our teacher would not let us out of grade three if we didn’t know the difference.’
In reply the paper said, ‘Cartoon creators want their characters to be believable, so they have them speak in a way that would be typical for the characters.’ Then it went further: ‘In our country, so many people use can instead of may that many dictionaries now show that it has come to mean the same thing.’
This reply was sent to me by Dr Merrill Sarty from Los Angeles, with the comment, ‘America loses another verbal distinction.’
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