What’s the difference: MAY vs MIGHT - Basic English Grammar

wanna speak real English from your first lesson sign up for your free lifetime account at English class 101.com hi everybody my name is Alisha in this lesson I'm going to talk about the differences between May and might let's get started first I want to begin this lesson with the word May I want to talk about two ways that we use May in modern American English first we use May to request and give permission so that means when we ask for permission we can use May and when we give permission we can use May let's look at a common example first person a says may I use your pen may I use your pen B says yes you may yes you may so in this question may is used to request to ask for permission may I and then B gives permission with may yes you may so this yes you may means yes you may use my pen in other words in many cases however native speakers drop this part they just say yes or sure or okay when you're making a question like this make sure that may comes before your subject so may I use your pen not I may use your pen don't use that pattern please use may I use your pen may we use your pen or use your computer for example so make sure May is coming before your eye or we or he or she you can choose to reply with yes you may the negative here would be no you may not no you may not another common example with may a common request is may I use the restroom may I use the restroom I'm going to talk a little bit more about another expression we use can in this question and similar questions a little bit later for now though let's consider this point one firme let's go to point two for me the second use of May is to express a low to moderate moderate is like medium a low to moderate level of possibility so May has this meaning yes so does might as I'll talk about later but May is less commonly used than might in American English so if you use May in a case like this as we'll see in a moment it's going to sound a little more formal a little more polite in American English we tend to use might more but let's look at some examples there's no communication problem here it just sounds a little formal first a positive statement I may visit a restaurant later today I may visit a restaurant later today means there's a possibility so kind of low to moderate level maybe like 20 to 40 50 percent chance I'll visit a restaurant later today in the negative then the next two sentence is we may not have time to finish our report today we may not have time to finish our report today so this may not means there's a possibility that we will not have time so there's kind of this chance that this thing will not be done today so same thing in the next one she may not be able to make it to the meeting so it might not is another way to say this yes but there's a low or moderate chance she will be able to make it so we use may not or as we'll see later might not to express that one more positive sentence he may join us later so again positive so that shows there is a chance that he's going to come later so think about this you can use May to talk about something in positive sentences that you think has a chance of happening a chance of occurring and may not to talk about something you think has a chance not happening so finally I want to end this section with this note about May versus can for permission so I mentioned that in this question here may I use the restroom for example we use both May and can in modern English to ask for permission so there's generally not a communication problem however some people prefer to use historical rules for these two words historically May has been used for permission so for this kind of thing this is a situation where the speaker is asking for permission like is it okay if I do this can however historically has been used to talk about abilities so the things we are able to do for example I can speak English I can speak French so if you're thinking historically can I use the restroom for some people some people who are very strict about rules think it means like do I have the ability to use the restroom of course in modern American English we use them the same so it's a permission question but occasionally you will meet people who prefer to use this may rule the historical may rule so if you want to be sure to be correct always please use may when you're trying to ask for permission in a situation like this or like this as well so if you want to be very very strict you can use May but many people use can I think I probably use can most of the time because May does sound a little bit formal but for your information this is the historical difference between these two words okay so with that in mind let's continue to might might so we use might to express a low to moderate level of possibility just as with May here however might is more commonly used than May in American English so again this point is about American English we tend to use might more often than in American English it might be a little different for British English speakers so we can make the same sentences that we made over here we can substitute might in place of May for example I might visit a restaurant later today I might hear so a positive sentence and to me an American English speaker this sounds much more like friendly much more commonly used I might visit a restaurant later today a negative we might not have time to finish our report today we might not have time so again there's a chance we won't have time to do this another negative she might not be able to make it to the meeting she might not be able to make it to the meeting so again this doesn't sound so formal she may not sound a little more polite finally he might join us later he might join us later a positive expression so again it sounds friendly it sounds like in everyday conversation so if you want to sound a bit more polite maybe you're using this at work for example you could use may to sound a little bit more polite otherwise I would recommend using might to sound friendly and have kind of a more everyday feel to your conversation one final point here is this old-fashioned point so this is not used might is not used in this way in modern American English but you might hear it sometimes so it's an old-fashioned use but using might to make requests for permission so like we talked about here but like I said this is not used in modern American English except for media so this is why I chose to include this point in this lesson so you might hear sentences like these like might I come in or might I help you so these are like requests we're asking is it ok to come in or like is it ok if I help you so it's kind of like making an offer this is an old-fashioned or archaic use of might in in English perhaps you'll hear this in British English but this is very rarely used in modern American English unless you're watching a movie that set in a time period a couple hundred years ago perhaps but this is not so commonly used if you want to make a question a permission question use May instead but you may hear this okay so this is a quick introduction to the differences between May and might and a quick discussion of May versus can for permission so I hope that this helped you understand the differences between using these words if you have any questions or comments please feel free to let us know in the comment section of this video of course if you like the video please don't forget to give it a thumbs up subscribe to our channel if you have not already and check us out at English class 101.com for some other things that can help you with your English Studies thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon bye [Music]

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Keywords: English Language (Interest), learn english, Language (Quotation Subject), Teacher (Profession), american culture, english culture, EnglishClass101, how to, speak, write, read, english, native speaker, english grammar, grammar lesson, basic english grammar, what’s the difference, may, might

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Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021