I would like to ask native speakers of the English language to tell me what difference in terms of probability they feel when they use the following words: MAY, MIGHT and COULD. To be more specific, let's think about these sentences:

1. He may be late.
2. He might be late.
3. He could be late.

Is it more probable that he will be late if I use MAY, for example? And to what extent? Thanks in advance for any answers.

Pedro Martínez:

IMHO, they ALL have the same level of probability :

a chance that he will be late but not actually committing to the definite of he will be.....3 ways of saying the same thing ...

Pedro Martínez: Well just reading what you wrote, I personally would use all three words - with the same exact meaning / probability.

After doing some quick searches on the internet, might is actually the past tense of may.

As another side note about adding "NOT" to the words:

"Could not" vs. "Might not"

Jack could not have the key. - means you didn't do that. (100% probability)

Jack might not have the key. - means there is a chance.
Jack may not have the key. - means there is a chance.

... so adding "not" changes it.

Anyway, here are a couple of sites that I quickly took these thoughts from:

http://www.englishpage.com/modals/could.html
http://esl.lbcc.cc.ca.us/eesllessons/maymight/maymight.htm (has quiz at bottom)
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/may-might.aspx

how would I write " why do you take all the white pieces in the games I post and never take the black ? " in Czech.

Thanks for any help, Mike

awesome: Proč si vždycky z mých výzev vybereš ty hry, ve kterých hraješ jako bílý, a nikdy nehraješ jako černý?

Pedro Martínez:

thanks Pedro

Could someone please tell me what the following means.

já jsem zapomněla, že hraji klonovací

thank you

yoyudax: I forgot this was/is Cloning Backgammon.

Thank you so much

Pedro Martinez is now a moderator. His linguistic skills will be very helpful in this discussion board. Thank you Pedro.

Walter Montego: Congratulations, Mr. Martínez

Any one from Finland know what 'tapporauta' means?

Rose: I'm not from Finland but it means ("Killing Iron")

Carl: Thanks Carl. I couldn't find a proper translation on line. It is from a band that I listen to that is from Finland. They don't sing in English but their song '<span>tapporauta' Is awesome. The band is Korpiklanni. very awesome band

Can anyone tell me what this means in English please?

лакер

Rose: lucker

Pedro Martínez: maybe they mean lucky?  I got 4 right/in right spot on Logik in 2 moves.

Rose: Yes, the person is probably telling you that he thinks you're lucky. "Lucker" is just a transcription from the cyrillic, I'm sure the word doesn't even exist in that person's language.

I went to a czech to english translator for this, but it was useless. LOL. It only translated one word.

tak tohle hrát neumím, hraji to prvně

The person typed it in a game, and I responded that I was sorry, but I didn't understand, and they responded with the eye rolling smiley, lol.

rod03801: I cannot play this, I am playing it for the first time.

Fencer: Thank you. Do you (or anyone?) know of a decent czech to english, english to czech translator website? I've tried a couple different ones, and they never are very helpful.

rod03801: There is no such thing as a machine translator one can rely on.

Pedro Martínez: True. For some languages, they seem to work better though. I can usually get a decent idea of what someone is saying from them. For some reason with Czech though, I tend to not have much luck.

rod03801: Well, I can imagine that if you have a text translated from, say, Spanish into Portuguese, you might get some quite meaningful results, in which the target text corresponds to a large extent to the source text.

You say you can get a decent idea of what is being said. Well, how do you know? The text provided by the translator might make some sense to you, but if you don't know the language, you can never tell if what you think is being said really matches what is actually being said. Let me give you an example. A Czech sentence "Dáme to dohromady?" generally means "Wanna date me?" However, Google Translator translates it as "Put it together?" Now there you can see that the machine-translated text does not precisely mean what the original Czech sentence does. :)

If you want to understand a foreign language, you have to start learning it.

Pedro Martínez: Good point. I have used it with languages that I have a little bit of a knowledge of. (Spanish, French), and those are probably the times when it has been good enough to get a general idea.

Czech seems like it would be a pretty difficult language to learn. (From an English perspective anyways). I could be totally off on that of course, but it's the impression I have.

www.dict.cc great one for german and english with learning functions.

how do you say :spectacular" in russian?

vpechatl'ayuschih as impressive
потряcáioщнй as amazing

Maybe you can use them both

Gouwe gozer: So at least we know now that you don't have a slightest clue about Russian.

Pedro Martínez: is he not correct?

Bwild: There is no "i" in Russian.

Pedro Martínez: mprovsation should be an opton over language borders :)

is this close?
ЭФФЕКТНЫЙ

Bwild: And what are you trying to say? WHAT is spectacular?

Bwild: Yes, that´s very close Depending on the meaning what you want to say is a translation for ЭФФЕКТНЫЙ
1. dramatic
2. glamor
3. glamorous
4. glamour
5. glamourous
6. showy
7. spectacular
8. viewy

So I guess you can use it

Pedro Martínez: Well, it´s very easy to give critical lines. The only thing is that I try to help.
Let me give an example: if you ask What is spectacular?
What are we doing here? We play games. So I guess Bwild had a spectacular game. That's why I give 2 possible solutions
I know there's no 'i' in Russian, but I don't have the right letter on my keyboard.
Next time I hope you can give a more positive reaction

Gouwe gozer: Well, if you really want to help somebody with a translation, you need somewhat more extensive knowledge of both source and target languages than just the knowledge of finding a word in a dictionary. If Bwild meant a game, you cannot use "эффектный" to refer to a game, because "game" is a feminine word in Russian, while "эффектный" is a masculine adjective. As for the word "впечатляющих", I'm wondering why you are suggesting an adjective in a plural number when you say that Bwild is talking about "a game".

Pedro Martínez: Thanks, this is a more constructive answer as before.

Bwild: Since Bulgarian and Russian are very close languages, I can give you what my dictionary gives for "spectacular" and then will translate every item.

SPECTACULAR
[spek'tækʃulə]

I. 1. грамаден, грандиозен, импозантен, ефектен, пищен
2. драматичен, вълнуващ, поразителен
-------------------------
In Russian:
I. 1. грамадный, грандиозный, (not sure the Russian word), эффектный, (not sure)
2. драматичний, волнующий, поразительний
================================
Gouwe gozer: If you miss some letters on your keyboard, you can use the built-in Character map (Start MenuProgramsAccessoriesSystem Tools) = Run "charmap.exe"
OR
if you are using Firefox, there is a neat extension called abcTajpu.
================================
Pedro Martínez: Please don't be rude. People are trying to help each other. Nobody is perfect.

AlliumCepa: Again, a completely useless post. Now what exactly do you expect Bwild to do with your list of words, of which you're not even sure if they are Russian? Trying to help is fine, but if you don't know what you're talking about, your help is actually the opposite of help.

AlliumCepa: thank you.

Pedro Martínez: Dude, you are continuing to behave badly. The man himself thanked me. And I am not sure about SOME of the words - those that are in brackets. The rest are fine.
FYI, the words in ANY known dictionary are listed from their closest meaning to those that are far from the original. And yes, I do know what I talk about.
Shame on you - you are supposed to be a moderator here and take absolutely different course of talks.
PS: Talking about useless posts - read yours.

Over and Out.

AlliumCepa: I believe the purpose of this forum is not to "be nice" to each other. Yes, we can keep thanking each other for nothing here and smile at each other and be satisfied even with incorrect and incomplete answers. But that is not the course I am willing to take. I would like this forum to provide as accurate answers as possible. Now in the case of Bwild's "spectacular", I asked him to provide more details about the context, since without the context, it is impossible to translate the word correctly.

In general, I would like to ask only those people who are familiar with the languages in question to provide answers here because otherwise their answers only lead to confusion and misunderstandings.

lighten up pedro.

Bwild: LOL! You ask him to "listen up"?! The moderator who believes a discussion board is not a place where people should be nice to each other? You are talking to a person who wants to change the meaning of the word "discussion" (an exchange of views on some topic) with his version of a one-way guide.
Truth --> http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/927.html

I believe he asked him to "lighten" up, which is American for relax... take it easy, take a chill pill, no sense sweating the small stuff, life is short.... good advice for all, including me

AlliumCepa: I can see pedro's concern, as once I was given a translation that got me in trouble and offended a very nice person.
however .. I see no harm in folks trying to honestly help one another, and I'm sure its been everyones intent to do so.

SPECTACULAR
[spek'tækʃulə]

Ваша версия:

In Russian:
1. громадный, грандиозный, импозантный, эффектный, пышный
2. драматичный, волнующий, поразительный

google.com: + захватывающий
yandex.ru: + производящий глубокое впечатление
PaoloRus: + трогательный

PaoloRus:

PaoloRus: Great post, very precise. Thank you.