Grammar Rule in 30 Seconds
Use 'may' and 'might' to express that something is possible but not certain.
- Use 'may' for present or future possibility: 'It may rain today.'
- Use 'might' for a slightly lower degree of certainty: 'He might come later.'
- Both are followed by the base form of the verb without 'to'.
Modal Verb Structure
| Subject | Modal | Verb | Rest of Sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
|
I
|
may
|
go
|
home
|
|
He
|
might
|
eat
|
now
|
|
They
|
may
|
not
|
arrive
|
Contractions
| Full | Note |
|---|---|
|
May not
|
No common contraction
|
|
Might not
|
Mightn't (rare)
|
Meanings
These modal verbs indicate that an event or state is possible. They express uncertainty about the truth of a statement.
Possibility
Expressing that something is likely to happen or be true.
“မိုးရွာနိုင်တယ် (It may rain).”
“သူတို့ လာနိုင်တယ် (They might come).”
Reference Table
| Form | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Affirmative
|
Sub + may/might + V
|
He may come
|
|
Negative
|
Sub + may/might + not + V
|
He may not come
|
|
Question
|
May/Might + Sub + V?
|
May he come?
|
正式程度
It may rain later. (Weather report)
It might rain later. (Weather report)
Might rain later. (Weather report)
Could rain. (Weather report)
Possibility Spectrum
High
- Must Certain
Medium
- May Likely
Low
- Might Unlikely
按水平分级的例句
It may rain.
မိုးရွာနိုင်တယ်။
He might come.
သူ လာနိုင်တယ်။
We may go to the park.
ငါတို့ ပန်းခြံသွားဖြစ်နိုင်တယ်။
She might be late.
သူမ နောက်ကျနိုင်တယ်။
The train might be delayed.
ရထား နောက်ကျနိုင်တယ်။
They may have forgotten.
သူတို့ မေ့သွားနိုင်တယ်။
The results may indicate a trend.
ရလဒ်တွေက လမ်းကြောင်းတစ်ခုကို ပြနိုင်တယ်။
It might be wise to wait.
စောင့်တာက ပိုကောင်းနိုင်တယ်။
The evidence might suggest otherwise.
အထောက်အထားတွေက တခြားနည်းနဲ့ ညွှန်ပြနိုင်တယ်။
One may conclude that the theory is flawed.
သီအိုရီ မှားယွင်းနေတယ်လို့ ကောက်ချက်ချနိုင်တယ်။
Had he known, he might have acted differently.
သူသာ သိခဲ့ရင် တခြားနည်းနဲ့ လုပ်ခဲ့နိုင်တယ်။
The implications may well be profound.
အကျိုးဆက်တွေက အလွန်ကြီးမားနိုင်တယ်။
容易混淆
Can is for ability, May is for possibility.
Must is 100% sure, Might is <50%.
They are very similar.
常见错误
He mays go
He may go
I might to go
I might go
May I can go?
May I go?
It may be rain
It may rain
He mights come
He might come
I may not to eat
I may not eat
She might have went
She might have gone
It may possibly rain
It may rain
Might you go?
May you go?
He might of gone
He might have gone
It may be that he might go
He might go
I might could go
I might go
句型
I ___ go to the store.
___ he be late?
They ___ have forgotten.
Real World Usage
It may rain in the afternoon.
I may be able to start next week.
Might be late!
Keep it simple
No 'to'
Politeness
Smart Tips
Use 'might' to sound less definitive.
Use 'May I' for politeness.
Avoid 'mays'.
发音
Weak forms
May and might are often unstressed in speech.
Rising
May he come? ↗
Polite inquiry
记住它
记忆技巧
May is for the day (brighter), Might is for the night (dimmer/less sure).
视觉联想
Imagine a coin toss. 'May' is the coin in the air, 'Might' is the coin rolling on the floor.
Rhyme
If you are not sure of the sight, use may or use might.
Story
I looked at the sky. It may rain. I checked my bag. I might have my umbrella. I searched deep. I might have left it at home.
Word Web
挑战
Write 3 sentences about what you might do this weekend.
文化笔记
Might is used more frequently than in American English.
May is often reserved for formal contexts.
Derived from Old English 'magan' (to be able).
对话开场白
What might you do this weekend?
May I ask a question?
What might happen if it rains?
日记主题
常见错误
Test Yourself
He ___ come to the party.
It ___ rain tomorrow.
Find and fix the mistake:
I might to go.
သူမ လာနိုင်တယ်။
Answer starts with: She...
Score: /4
练习题
4 exercisesHe ___ come to the party.
It ___ rain tomorrow.
Find and fix the mistake:
I might to go.
သူမ လာနိုင်တယ်။
Score: /4
常见问题 (6)
No, that is a double modal and is grammatically incorrect.
Historically yes, but in modern English, it is a present/future possibility.
May is generally considered more formal than might.
Yes, but 'May I' is common for requests, while 'Might I' is very formal.
Use 'might' for a lower degree of certainty.
Yes, 'may not' and 'might not'.
Scaffolded Practice
1
2
3
4
Mastery Progress
Needs Practice
Improving
Strong
Mastered
In Other Languages
Poder
English has separate modals for ability (can) and possibility (may).
Pouvoir
English modals are more specialized.
Mögen
German uses 'können' for possibility more often than 'mögen'.
Kamoshirenai
Japanese is agglutinative, English uses auxiliary verbs.
Rubbama
Arabic uses adverbs, English uses modal verbs.
