On 26/9/07 11:08 AM, "andrew burke" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Echoes of my old Prefect of Studies, a Welsh firebrand, who would say,
> You can but you may not.
>
> I can hear it to this day, and I think I used to say it to my kids. What a
> bore.
My family kept elderly aunts to say this sort of thing.
We children kept on asking: Can I, can we?
Only in books did we find folk saying:
Mayn't I, mayn't we?
Max from old New Zealand
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