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There was an incident related to this that got a couple of German colleagues in big trouble. They were told that a specific change "must not" go into a release,
by not2b 7y ago
There was an incident related to this that got a couple of German colleagues in big trouble. They were told that a specific change "must not" go into a release, it was OK for it to wait for the next patch release. They heard "must not" as the negative of "must", as it is in German. This is wrong: "you must" and "you have to" are the same, but "you must not" and "you don't have to" are not the same. They thought they were being told "you don't have to" but thought they had the freedom to get the fix to a customer sooner. It seems this caused breakage for a different customer and they were accused of being insubordinate until it was sorted out.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago> They were told that a specific change "must not" go into a release, it was OK for it to wait for the next patch release. To be fair, the two clauses of this sentence are somewhat confusing: If it is "OK to wait" it somehow implies that "you don't have to", while "must not" is indeed imperative.
- StavrosK 7y agoI think that's the GP paraphrasing, the real issue seems to me to be the fact that "du musst nicht" literally translates to "you don't have to".
- not2b 7y agoYes. Although their English was excellent, they thought that "you must not" meant "du musst nicht".
- lonelappde 7y agoWhat's the level above excellent that includes the grammar of negatives?
- matheusmoreira 7y agoTheir English could have been excellent. People can communicate effectively and yet have small gaps in their knowledge that remain unnoticed for years.
- not2b 7y agoYes, for example, there appears to be a gap in the knowledge of many native English speakers, on this issue. "You must not" is not the negative of "You must" in English. It's an oddball exception, one that native speakers don't notice because they've been hearing "You must not" since about age two. So people accusing my former colleagues of not understanding the grammar of negatives really don't get it: they understood perfectly, they just weren't aware of a very important exception.
- abecedarius 7y agoSeems like the associativity is different: in English "must not foo" groups as "must (not foo)" while German's is like "(must not) foo" (taking 'not' as postfix there)?
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoI think the more illustrative comparison in English here would be "you must not" vs "it is not a must to".
- PeterisP 7y agoThe difference between "must not" vs "need not"; in some languages the equivalent word functions like english "need".