Exact Difference between "May" and "Might&quo

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Since there's so much confusion about the difference, we should just quit using "may" and always use "might". Let's reserved "May" for the fifth month of the year.

No need for confusion. The guest is actually correct. Below is the dictionary's definition of might and may.

http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/d71.html

May expresses likelihood while might expresses a stronger sense of doubt or a contrary-to-fact hypothetical. The difference in degree between "You may be right" and "You might be right" is slight but not insignificant: if I say you may be right about something, there is a higher degree of probability that you are right about it than if I say you might be right about something. Example: You think Einstein is the most brilliant physicist who ever lived? You may be right. / You think it's going to rain this afternoon even though the sun is shining this morning? Well, you might be right. May expresses likelihood while might expresses a stronger sense of doubt or a contrary-to-fact hypothetical: We might have been able to go if Keir had not been so slow to get ready.
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<<The guest is actually correct.>>

You mean, Guest is correct according to one dictionary. I'm going to respectfully disagree with dictionary.com; I think that the difference between "You may be right" and "You might be right" is neither slight, nor significant, but rather nonexistent. Apparently some people do perceive a difference between these two sentences, and that's fine; but I don't.

>>You mean, Guest is correct according to one dictionary. I'm going to respectfully disagree with dictionary.com; I think that the difference between "You may be right" and "You might be right" is neither slight, nor significant, but rather nonexistent.>>

Actually for my region (North Carolina, US), the dictionary is dead-on. There's a slight difference between "may" and "might". In my area, both are used for uncertainty, but "might" is the slightly more uncertain one of the two.

Lazar, here we go.
dictionary.com, E.H(american native speaker), my teacher (another american native speaker) do percieve a difference between these two words. Do you think that you are more smarter than those lexicographers(native speakers) who designed dictionary.com as a reference tool?

<Traditionally, "may" is present subjunctive and "might" is past subjunctive. So if you're talking about possibilities in the present or the future, traditionally you use "may". ("This may happen," "That may be true.") If you're talking about possibilities in the past, then you use "might". ("That might have happened [but it didn't]," "He might have succeeded [but he didn't].") >

Are you saying that, in traditional grammars, "might" was not used to refer to the present and future ?

For me, In British English, might is always more remote than may. Remote in time, possibility and social relations.

<<Are you saying that, in traditional grammars, "might" was not used to refer to the present and future ?>>

Exactly. According to the traditional prescriptivist norms, a sentence like "You might be right" wouldn't be allowable.

Guest and E.H.: Okay, I'll concede that there does seem to be a bit of a difference, as indicated by dictionary.com. The thing is that I seem to have trained myself over the past few years to adhere more to the traditional usage (not that there's anything wrong with the modern usage), so I probably use "may" more often than most native speakers would.

<Exactly. According to the traditional prescriptivist norms, a sentence like "You might be right" wouldn't be allowable. >

Do you have any links to sources that say such?

>>Exactly. According to the traditional prescriptivist norms, a sentence like "You might be right" wouldn't be allowable. >>

Are you refering to pre-ME presriptivist? Here we see "present" meaning of "might" existed in the ME period.

"All the examples displaying ahte date from the 12th-13th c., as for the examples using owe, they date from the 13th up to the 15th century: owe is the latest, yet it is to be supplanted by ahte (we assume this is due to the standardization of all the modal past forms during the middle and late period of ME: ought, could, might, would, should and must have a past form but a `present´ meaning)."

http://www.celineromero.com/eng-thesis_html/thesis.html

No. I think I read it somewhere, but to be honest I can't find any sources to back it up. I retract my blanket assertion about traditional norms.

<<Are you refering to pre-ME presriptivist? Here we see "present" meaning of "might" existed in the ME period.>>

Okay, okay, you won the argument. Go have a party.

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