Hypercorrection occurs when someone misunderstands a language rule and tries to fix a perceived error when there is none. I saw a good example online once. Spanish and Portuguese speakers often have trouble with words that begin with sc or st, often putting an e in front. For example, estop. The story I saw was from a Spanish speaker who tried very hard to correct this mistake, but went overboard, pronouncing words that do begin with an e incorrectly. For example, escape → scape.

Hypercorrections can be amusing. Unfortunately, when you search for info about them online, you’ll find people calling something a hypercorrection when it’s instead an old, established usage. For example, using nominative case in a conjoined object of a prepositional phrase. (E.g. between you and I.) The rule is supposedly that you must use accusative case in non-conjoined prepositional objects (e.g. about her) so you must use it in conjoined prepositional phrase objects as well. But people have been using nominative conjoined constructions since before people even began teaching English as a subject in schools. (Shakespeare used between you and I, for example.) The same could be said for the ever-common complaints about using whom in subordinate clauses, another construction that has been around much longer than has anxiety about the correct usage of whom.

About a decade ago, I witnessed the starkest hypercorrection I’ve ever heard in the wild. I had a coworker who used may not just when asking for permission, but when making requests. For example, she’d write, May you send me the file?

She couldn’t be convinced that it was wrong. If asked about it, she said something like, My English teacher said you’re supposed to use may. Her boss could have ordered her to stop, but he didn’t have a good response to that. And she thought her English teacher knew more than random coworkers. So us telling her that she misunderstood the rule was hopeless.

One of the coolest things about studying language is that, if you are a native speaker, your brain contains millions of bits of evidence regarding what is and is not grammatical. You often don’t have to consult a corpus of English writing. You inherently know that Himself was seen in the mirror by him is wrong. You know that yellow old box is wrong. You know that We are having 10 tickets is wrong, though I’ve noticed ESL speakers often struggle with stative verbs. And you know that May you send me the file is wrong. All of this, even if you can’t explain why.

This particular hypercorrection is especially absurd because the rule is bull. “Can” is used for permission all the time. It’s especially used to deny permission, where no you can’t is strongly preferred to no you mayn’t or no you may not.¹

When students misunderstand a rule explained by a teacher, it’s not necessarily the teacher’s fault. But when the rule is made up, counter to actual usage? Then I can’t blame the student. What do we expect, when we teach them that their brains, their enormous corpus of evidence for what is and is not grammatical, is useless for the task?

Hypercorrections aren’t that common, so I consider this the least of prescriptivism’s sins. But unnecessarily crushing people’s trust in their ability to speak and understand their own language? It’s a small tragedy. It robs people of the realization that they’re experts on the subject. Native speakers mostly don’t need to be taught how to speak English; they need to learn how to talk about what they know.