May/can

Question

If you were in a restaurant and the waiter was not around, you might need to ask a fellow diner at the next table about the smoking regulations in that place. Would you use "may" or "can" in that situation?
Excuse me, may we smoke in here?
Excuse me, can we smoke in here?

Tarirotari · Accepted Answer

Both are correct.

You could also ask: Excuse me, is smoking allowed in this restaurant? or
Excuse me, do you know whether smoking is allowed in this restaurant?

Dokterjokkebrok · Answer

Hi

For expressing permission, I think both are fine. 'Can' seems to me less formal than 'may' in this case.

Regards

MichalS · Answer

Hi,

I think I prefer "can" in this context. The reason may be that "can" is usually used to speak of a general permission, like:

A: - Can you park here? B: No, you can't - it's a no parking zone.

- Students can speak without standing up in this class.

Whereas "may" is rather used to ask sb's permission (not general):

- May I use you phone for a minute?

Here you rather ask if there is a general permission to smoke in this restaurant (if one can smoke), not if the waiter doesn't mind you smoking.

This is how I see it but I'm not a native speaker of English.
I'd be grateful for a native speaker's opinion.

Michal

Forbes · Answer

If you asked an English teacher in England in 60's: "Can I leave the room please sir?" you would have been likely to have received the answer: "You can, but you may not."

Dokterjokkebrok · Answer

May is definitely more well-spoken. Although, of course, if your intonation is off, anything can sound discourteous.

Toms Mathew · Answer

Hi,

I agree with MichelS. 'can' is for general permission and 'may' is for 'personal' permission.

Thanks.

MichalS · Answer

ForbesIf you asked an English teacher in England in 60's: "Can I leave the room please sir?" you would have been likely to have received the answer: "You can, but you may not."

Yeah I think you can still hear that from some old speakers of English, but now it would probably be some kind of joke.

However, we're interested in the present state of affairs in this thread.

dokterjokkebrokMay is definitely more well-spoken. Although, of course, if your intonation is off, anything can sound discourteous.

Intonation is not the case here. In order to asnwer this question we need to suppose Anon spoke perfect English. I agree that 'may' seems more well-spoken, but only where's it's ok to use both 'can' and 'may', like in:

Can I have some water, please?(We're talking the present-day situation, Forbes

)
May I have some water, please?

Yet I do not agree that it is more well-spoken in answers to such questions. For example:

A: Can I have some water, please?
B: Yes, you may / can. ('can' here would definitely be more polite, which, I believe, is quite synonymous with 'well-spoken'.)

A: May I have some water, please?
B: Yes, you may / can. (The same works here. Even if the original question used 'may', it's still condescending (thus not really 'well-spoken') to answer using 'may'. I think it would be much more polite to say: "yes, you can".

Leaving aside politeness though, again, I still think that you use 'can' (not 'may') when you're asking somebody if you have the right or power to do something, which is not to be understood as asking for permission. In other words, I think that 'can' has quite a wider operational scope than 'may'. Consider the following examples:

Can I park here? (By this, you could be either asking sb's permission to park or you're merely asking somebody if he knows whether one can [has the right to] park here or not - if it is a no parking zone or not.)

May I park here? (For me it's clearly asking for permission - if the other person doesn't mind you parking here, for example because the space in which you want to park your car belongs to that person, as it's his private property.)

To recapitulate, I would use both 'may' and 'can' to ask sb's permission ('may' being more formal though), but I would use only 'can' to ask for "general permission" (if I have the right to do something or not), which I think is the case in the original poster's question. Therefore I would say that "can we smokre here?" is better-suited in that context.

Michal

Ivanhr · Answer

Note also that 'smoking is allowed in this restaurant' is incorrect.

It should be smoking is permitted in this restaurant.

Eszter · Answer

Do you mind if we some here? Is it correct?

Eszter · Answer

Sorry. Do you mind if we smoke here? Is it correct?

May/can

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