I’m going to talk about your mama now. Or, as we’re seeing more and more, your momma. Please don’t think I’m picking a fight. I’m quite sure that, unlike grammar snobs, the vast majority of you could flatten me with very little effort.
I mean no offense to your mama, your momma, or, if you’re an amorous young guy checking out the girls on Miami Beach, your mami. But I feel obliged to point out that something your mother told you all those years was, well, a little off.
Remember how you would say, “Can I be excused?” and she’d correct you, saying it should be “may I”? And remember how you just kind of took this as gospel, revised your request, and left the table with your head hanging low? Well, the Chicago Manual of Style contains some bad news for your mama:
“In colloquial English, ‘can’ also expresses a request for permission (Can I go to the movies?), but this usage is not recommended in formal writing.”
By now, however, you shouldn’t be surprised that, if your mama knows where to look, she can find some experts to support her side, too.
“Can,” say Strunk and White, “means ‘am (is, are) able.’ Not to be used as a substitute for ‘may.’ ”
But, assuming you ever get the chance and the inclination to resume this decades-old dispute with your mama, you could score the match point by opening pretty much any dictionary.
Webster’s New World College Dictionary is on your side: “can. 5. (Informal) am, are, or is permitted to; may.”
My old American Heritage Dictionary goes even further: “Can 3. used to request or grant permission: ‘Can I be excused?’ ”
Unless your mama wore a tiara to dinner and had six forks at each place setting, the informal “can” was okay.
Why is it then that mamas and daddies (including papas and poppas) have always harped and will continue to harp on the “may”-versus-“can” thing? Those of you thinking that the answer has anything to do with grammar snobbery on your parents’ part should wash your brains out with soap. No, the reason that even your own beautiful, noble, and saintly mother harps on this one is not a reflection on her. The reason is simply because some language choices just beg to be nitpicked.
For example, the house I grew up in was anything but a temple of language learning. Yet there was one sentence that always evoked swift correction. Saying “I’m done” was a high crime punishable by sarcasm.
“You’re not done. You’re not a roast. You’re finished.”
Despite the bravery I advocated when I was telling you to pick a fight with your own mama, my courage is nowhere to be found on this one. And the fact that AP, Strunk and White, Bill Walsh, and Chicago all completely overlook the “done”-versus-“finished” topic hardly emboldens me. The only authority I’ve found willing to tackle this one is a force more frightening than all the others combined: Marilyn vos Savant—the woman listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the world’s highest IQ. (I’m not sure how they managed to compare her brainpower with all the poor people in the developing world who’ve never set foot in a formal classroom, but I suppose that’s the magic of standardized testing.)
I should probably keep in perspective that her weekly “Ask Marilyn” column appears in Parade magazine instead of the New Yorker or the Atlantic. But this is a woman who has made a career out of being right, putting mathematicians and the like to shame. Vos Savant scares me. Period.
So, while I could argue either side of the “done”-versus- “finished” debate, I’m not willing to mess with Marilyn. Here’s how vos Savant dealt with a reader’s question in her column:
“Dear Marilyn: My boss believes that the sentence, ‘I’m done,’ is grammatically incorrect. He says I should say, ‘I’m finished.’ I say that you can do something, so you can be ‘done.’ Who’s right?—Annette Wolf, Toledo, Ohio.”
Marilyn’s answer: “He is. You would say, ‘I’m done,’ in circumstances such as the following: You are announcing your creation (‘I’m done!’) or you are declaring yourself adequately cooked (‘I’m done’).”
What she meant is that the word “do” is never conjugated this way. Its inflections include “I do,” “I did,” “I am doing,” and “I have done.” But never is the verb “to do” conjugated with “am” and “done.”
After “am,” the word “done” is acting as an adjective, not as a form of the verb “do.” And as an adjective, “done” has its own distinct definition—one that means, among other things, “created” or “adequately cooked.”
If I were to take issue with Marilyn, which God knows I’m not, I might point out that the expression “I’m done with you” is a defensible colloquialism from which one could logically extrapolate, “I’m done.”
Also, if I were to take issue with Marilyn, which God knows I’m still not, I might point out that “I’m finished” has a lot of the same problems as “I’m done.”
Like “done,” “finished” is both a past participle and an adjective. And, like “done,” its adjective form has the definitions “completed” and “ended.”
So, at first it seems to me that “I am finished” has the exact same problem as “I am done.” That is, they both mean not that I have completed something but that I myself am completed.
But there’s a catch, one I’m sure Marilyn could pulverize me with were she ever to try. While the adjectives “done” and “finished” have some overlapping definitions, they have some distinct definitions, too. For example, one meaning of “done” is “to be fully cooked.” That’s a meaning not shared by “finished.” But “finished” has a definition that “done” does not—one Webster’s notes as an “Americanism”: “finished . . . 6. done with a task, activity, or concern (‘they were finished by noon.’)”
Therefore, “I am finished” is okay because it means “I am done with” something. But “I am done” is not okay because the adjective “done” is not defined as “finished with” something.
I’d bet that ninety-nine percent of the people who’ve nitpicked others for saying, “I am done,” had no grasp of the schizophrenic rules behind their own nitpicking. The most likely exceptions being Marilyn and, of course, your own beautiful, wise, and noble mother.