"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...?"
Great , I'll just stop now and learn the 400 or so countries, counties and regions I'll need to operate this lesson... maybe one day the next level ...who knows - don't the French make mistakes and stand corrected and move on ?
Someone at the Foreign office once asked if General de Gaulle believed in God? Someone answered - it would depend how good God's French was.!
A little bit to fast for me. I'm (probably) A2 - ie, not quite at the dizzy heights of B1 (That seems to be an impossible dream at the moment).
Having read the transcript and read the translation, I was able to follow most (70%) of what the narrator was saying.
I thought French was supposed to be easy! (It isn't).
I'm killing myself trying to learn it. I'm a doctor and supposed to be smart but French is the hardest thing I've ever done....
HELP!
The sentence for translation was: "help clearing the table after eating." I wrote "après avoir mangé" for "after eating" and this was marked wrong. They wanted "après manger". Can anyone help me understand why "après avoir mangé" is wrong?
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...?"
If not, then why does "Je sors au restaurant" imply that the destination is the restaurant? Since both sentences have the same structure "sortir à"
I note that there are quests in the past to improve the content of this lesson and I am unsure whether any modifications have been made but it is still difficult to determine when devoir is an appropriate answer as well as avoid besoin de and avoir envie de. Is it that there is an infinitive following if so why only devoir and not avoir envie de as in the case of needing to buy a handbag? Surely it could be made clearer - google is not a reasonable guide and I want to understand!
Is there anything grammatically or idiomatically wrong with "Je ne suis pas vraiment intéressé par la peinture"?
Why is mets pronounced May instead of Meh? in the lesson A1 le jour de Noël?
Is there somewhere I can find the number of French topics covered on Kwiziq per CEFR level?
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