"Can / May I ask you a question?"

[David Gignilliat]

Good post.  Make that two people that are regularly annoyed by this . My
mother does this all the time, usually right before she starts asking me
about my love life or for a huge favor. I've thought about jokingly saying
no, but (like you said) you're already past that point technically ...

alas

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 4:44 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "Can / May I ask you a question?"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> When I held a service position - the only kind that there is in a
> library, according to the American Library Association - in Widener
> Library, often, patrons would ask me
>
> "Can / May I ask you a question?"
>
> That used to drive me *crazy*! How is it that people can have brains
> so weirdly wired as not to be able to understand that, when you ask a
> person whether you can ask him a question, you are, by that very act,
> asking him a question, regardless of whether he is willing to allow
> you to ask him a question?!! WTF?! The person asked that question has
> no choice but to say yes. There's no way that he can tell someone that
> has already asked him a question that he *can't* / *may'nt* ask him a
> question when he's already asked him a question by asking him whether
> he can ask him a question! It's a nasty trap that there's no way get
> out of.
>
> I sometimes tried to point out to people who asked me whether they
> could ask me a question that they had already asked me a question by
> asking me whether they could ask me a question. Hence, the person's
> request for permission to do what he had already done by the very act
> of requesting permission to do it was necessarily, in some sense that
> i lack the knowledge to specify, WRONG! But they never understood.
> They would smile and agree with me, but I knew that they were only
> jollying me.
>
> Sigh! Perhaps I'm the only person in the English-speaking world who is
> bothered by this, but
>
> AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
>
> -Wilson
>
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
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>



--
David K. Gignilliat
Woodbridge, VA
703-217-4380
http://quixoticawords.blogspot.com

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