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I take your point, grunger. However, John McEnroe wrote a book called You Cannot be Serious, surely the most memorable can NOT of all.

McEnroe: "You can't be serious. You can not be serious."

Orson Jigjag

Thanks. I think it is "cannot" if the stress is on the first syllable, otherwise "can not" as McEnroe said. The book title is not what he said.

Grunger

Looks as though NZ might get the win after all!
I`ve booked for Scarborough for the Roses match - it starts on the same day as the Euro Final. There`ll be 60,000 at Wembley but we still don`t know if we will be allowed to watch the cricket! Most who want to go will be fully vaccinated so I hope the government relax the rules a little.

On cannot/can not, I've been saying it in my head, and have come to the conclusion that it's not such much the stress - more whether each N is pronounced separately. My "cannot" would be pretty much the same as "canot", whereas "can not" would be "can knot", if you see what I mean.

By an amazing co-incidence, there is an article about McEnroe and what he said, in the Times today. I have looked it up and Jigjag is right, He says cant and can not but not cannot. So his book title is wrong. It was all before my time but interesting.

Tyke

Yes well played NZ if they do it. Good luck for Scarb. I am hoping to go to Lancs v Worcs in 2 weeks but I dont know if it will be OK

Agreed, Johnny Mac's book should have been "Can Not" as that is what he said. Possibly an overzealous editor changed it incorrectly. My autocorrect is always trying to do the same.

Grunger, I think hep, although very outdated now, was a lot more common here in the US, as it was typically associated with the jazz culture. A "hep cat" was a very cool thing to be. I have certainly run across it many times in books, movies, etc. set in that time period.

mathpro

You may well be right about the wrong book title.

Thanks for the info re hep. I have never heard it used here, nor hip, nor cat for jazz fans for that matter.

I enjoyed looking up the McEnroe clip. It seems tennis was more interesting in those days.