"Can I" and "may I" in EnglishBonjour,
I certainly do not know enough of French culture and language to discuss your explanation of French usage, below. However, I disagree that in English, the difference between "may I" and "can I" is that "may I" is more formal. More accurately, "can I" may be informal and in common usage, yes, but it is also often considered abrupt and somewhat impolite, and this is not only by grammar nerds (or oldies) such as I (or grammar nerds like me, to use more idiomatic speech, ha ha).
The grammatical distinctions are obvious, of course ("can" denoting capacity or ability, "may" is conditional, one is granted capacity). One hears often, when someone is ordering in a cafe or bar, "can I get a... ". To many English-speakers, this is grating and impolite. I, for one, hope that "may I have...", does not go out of idiomatic usage (though perhaps that battle is lost and I am just raving...)
Love Lawless French, by the way,
Alice
"In the case of pouvoir, note that je peux becomes irregular in the inverted form: puis-je, in order to ease pronunciation.
This structure is very formal as we stated before, and is usually used to sound particularly polite or even a bit affected: the nearest English equivalent would be to use May I...?"
Would "Nous ne reconnaissons pas vous" be an acceptable alternative to "Nous ne vous reconnaissons pas" ? Why is ne..pas wrapped around two words in your sentence?
I recently read that someone (who is a native speaker and well-informed on grammar and usage) said that it is incorrect to say 'en arrivant à la maison' -- that is is 'en arrivant dans la maison'. While confirming that 'en arrivant au restaurant, ...au musée, ...au théâtre' etc. is correct, they claim that when saying 'arriving at home' the preposition 'dans' must be used. Can someone tell me if this is true, and if it is if it's just "because that's the way it is" or if there's some grammatical explanation? Thank you very much for your help!
I echo the comments below regarding this lesson lacking clarity.
The explanation of when it IS appropriate to use 'devoir' is missing and I find it easier to just memorise the correct answers rather than try to answer them using knowledge of the grammar rules.
Pouquoi "de" il essaie de parler français
vraiment ou vraiement? I think it is vraiment -
Isn't there a commonly used or a popular option from the 2 duplicates? Maybe a little asterisk could go a long way for newbies like me :)
Je l'ai trouvé intéressant que l'on ne dit pas "aimer beaucoup" pour exprimer "aimer très fort". J'ai consulté ensuite quelques ressources sur Internet. Parmi des Français sont d'accord avec l'explication sur ce site mais il y a bien d'autres Français qui ne sont pas d'accord avec elle et qu'ils croient qu'"aimer beaucoup" est le même qu'"aimer très fort".
Existe-t-il des différences dialectiques, peut-être?
Bonjour,
I certainly do not know enough of French culture and language to discuss your explanation of French usage, below. However, I disagree that in English, the difference between "may I" and "can I" is that "may I" is more formal. More accurately, "can I" may be informal and in common usage, yes, but it is also often considered abrupt and somewhat impolite, and this is not only by grammar nerds (or oldies) such as I (or grammar nerds like me, to use more idiomatic speech, ha ha).
The grammatical distinctions are obvious, of course ("can" denoting capacity or ability, "may" is conditional, one is granted capacity). One hears often, when someone is ordering in a cafe or bar, "can I get a... ". To many English-speakers, this is grating and impolite. I, for one, hope that "may I have...", does not go out of idiomatic usage (though perhaps that battle is lost and I am just raving...)
Love Lawless French, by the way,
Alice
"In the case of pouvoir, note that je peux becomes irregular in the inverted form: puis-je, in order to ease pronunciation.This structure is very formal as we stated before, and is usually used to sound particularly polite or even a bit affected: the nearest English equivalent would be to use May I...?"
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