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Not having to do something in German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 16 13 November 2011 at 1:50am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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What the others said. It's probably easiest to understand if you think like:
In English, must works more or less like You must - you are obligated to do it You mustn't - you are obligated to not do it The similarity between 'must' and 'müssen' is a source of confusion for any German speaking English learner and probably the other way around as well. In German, it works like: Sie müssen/du musst es tun es tun - you are obligated to do it Sie müssen/du musst es nicht tun - you are not obligated to do it Sie dürfen/du darfst es tun - you are allowed to do it Sie dürfen/du darfst es nicht tun - you are not allowed to do it Typically, 'müssen' in a positive sentence is used for orders or to express that something is absolutely necessary in a certain situation. It is used in instances where English uses 'must' or 'to have to'. In its negated form, it is used to tell a person that what they're doing or intending to do is not necessary or that it's up to their own choice. Imagine 'you don't have to do it'. 'Dürfen' in a positive sentence is used to signal permission, like 'to be allowed to' or 'may'. 'Darf ich?' - 'Ja, du darfst.' would be 'May I?' - 'Yes, you may.' Following that idea, you could also reply with 'Nein, du darfst nicht.' which matches 'No, you may not.' I chose 'to be allowed to' over 'may' because the latter also partially matches with another German modal verb. (You don't need that one yet, but it'll be easier when the time has come if you think of 'dürfen' as 'to be allowed to'.) Edited by Bao on 13 November 2011 at 1:51am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 16 13 November 2011 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It is not just the spelling, but also a word order problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tpark Tetraglot Pro Member Canada Joined 7046 days ago 118 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, German, Dutch, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 16 13 November 2011 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes the word order is incorrect - I was trying to transcribe what the student had said on the tape. The students on the recording make many errors. The mistakes that the students make are an integral part of MT's learning system. I believe that Michel Thomas' understanding of nicht müssen is incorrect based on comments made by experienced German speakers in this thread. I am going to accept the information given by the posters in this thread (as well as in the workbook) as being correct. Thank you all for helping a newbie learn German. From the postings in this thread, it seems to me that the accepted meaning of nicht müssen is that there is no obligation to do something. For clarification, here is a transcript of what was said in Advanced German with Michel Thomas, disc 2 lesson 2:
This is from the Themen aktuell workbook page 59:
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 16 13 November 2011 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Ironically, I never had a problem mit müssen und darfen and you just made me doubt for a minute about my English, so I had to follow the thread through. To me, "must" (being required to do something) and "must not" (being required not to do it, not being allowed) are exact opposites, while "don't have to" is an intermediate, different kind of thing. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 13 of 16 14 November 2011 at 1:00am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Are 100% sure? The problem is that "have to" and "must" are pretty much synonyms, but I doubt that any native speaker would ever claim that "must not" and "don't have to" are synonyms as well. Take, for example, the random headline: We must not forget the price we paid in Iraq If you replaced "must not" with "don't have to" you'd completely change the meaning. In that respect, German is more logical, because "nicht müssen" is the exact opposite of "müssen." Edited by Doitsujin on 14 November 2011 at 1:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 16 14 November 2011 at 10:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Logical, yes! Swedish (maybe all the Scandinavian languages?) also work like this:
Han måste... (Er muss...) Han måste inte... (Er muss nicht...) Same for Spanish "tengo que" vs. "no tengo que". Either you have to do something or you don't, and there's no "prohibition" involved (like the English "must not"). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 16 14 November 2011 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In my variant of English "may not" has come to mean "you are not allowed to", thus usurping the logical meaning of "must not", and this has brought a degree of asymmetry into the English system which the other language have avoided.
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 16 of 16 15 November 2011 at 9:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Oke, vielleicht nicht 100%, aber sehr sicher anyway ;)
I doubt any non-native speakers like me would do it either ;)
The "problem" here is that defining what "opposites" are, let alone "exact" ones, is much harder than defining "synonyms". For the example at hand, there are two possible definitions which, mind you, are purely arbitrary, so none is inherently better. You use a modal to indicate an action is "mandatory" (so the whole action is defined in two parts now), and then use a marker to say "the opposite", fine. However, depending where this new marker points to, you say "X is NOT mandatory; i.e. X is optional" or "NOT X is mandatory; i.e. X is forbidden". Which one is "the exact opposite"? To add to the fun, both in German and English the new marker goes in the middle, so... is it pointing to the left or to the right? Well, in English it points to the right, so must + not + do = doing is forbidden, while in German it points to the right, so müssen + nicht + tun = doing is optional. Yikes! Maybe German is more consistent about "nicht" pointing to its left than English is about "not" pointing to its right (it is not the least bit consistent, I know), but who cares? -- isn't it all just more fun like this? :) Now, none of this posed a problem for me before the "exact opposite" bit (even then, but it was good for a laugh). Why? English (native or advanced non-native) speakers might keep mentally translating to English because of the similarities (beware y'all!). One way or another, I wasn't that advanced in English before I learned this in German. I think I always take care when I notice misleading similarities, so thanks for reminding me again! Edit: @Jeff, "I" don't agree about Spanish. I concur that "no tengo que..." literally means "don't have to", but it is also quite often used to mean "must not". There's no unambiguous AND widespread ("tengo prohibido" is unambiguous but not really widespread when talking about personal obligations) alternative; "no puedo" is immediately ambiguous about physical possibility, so you may have to keep clarifying. Edited by mrwarper on 15 November 2011 at 10:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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