Amy's English

[pne]

The other day, Amy asked me, "May you get me my water, please?"

I had to think a bit about it, then I guessed that this was an application of the rule "can turns to may in polite contexts: Can I play outside? -> May I play outside, please?; Can you give me my teddy bear? -> May you give me my teddy bear, please?". I was amused :)

---

In slightly related news, we played some Mini-LüK recently, and one of the games was to find words that rhymed (in German).

It was interesting to see that she knew some of the words on that page (e.g. tower, collar) in English but not in German!

Another exercise was "words which sound the same but mean something different"; I think that was a bit difficult since I don't know how many children know that "Bart" refers to part of a key or "Kamm" to a cock's comb. And "Bauer" for a (bird) cage is very firmly passive vocabulary for me; I've heard that that meaning exists, but have never actually seen it used, let alone used it myself. ("Löffel" for a hare's ears is also a bit marginal to expect a child to know, IMO.)

We also did a few exercises from the "reading exercises for pre-schoolers" book; she's starting to get a bit less afraid of small letters now.

Comments

[cesy]

See, I would have said that "can" turning to "may" was not about politeness, but about whether the question is about ability or permission. For instance, one is almost always physically able to play outside, but usually you wish to ask permission, so it's "may". "Can you give me my teddy bear?" is about if it's possible to reach it (to which my father would often answer "Yes" and then sit there and do nothing), whereas "May you give me my teddy bear?" is about permission, and "Will you give me my teddy bear, please?" is probably the most useful question.

*is a grammar geek*

[pne]

I would have said that "can" turning to "may" was not about politeness, but about whether the question is about ability or permission.

Well, yes -- that's the rule that I use.

But it doesn't explain her utterance, since "May you give me my teddy bear?" doesn't make a whole lot of sense then. Why would she ask whether I had permission to give her something? I think she was trying to request something politely, i.e. she inferred the wrong relationship between "can" and "may", one based on normal/polite rather than one based on ability/permission.

"Will you give me my teddy bear, please?" is probably the most useful question.

Indeed.