Hi,

Hopefully someone can help me with this. In French does a sentence like "Il ne faut pas le dire" mean "It is necessary to not say it" or "It is not necessary to say it"?

I always thought it was the latter, but I'm reading something here and the context really suggests the former. Could someone clear this up.

 

Hi remosfan, it is the former (It is necessary to not say it). If you wanted the latter, you could say "Ce n'est pas nécessaire de le dire" (I hope this phrase is correct, please correct if not). I had this confusion at one point as well! It is the same as "Je ne dois pas..", i.e., it means "I must not...", not "I don't have to..."

 

Thanks Markus, that clears things up. And thanks for the head up about "Je ne dois pas", which I would've read wrong as well. What happened to French being the logical language par excellence?

There's nothing wrong with you phrase that I can see -- the only thing is I can hear my teacher saying "You say ce but write il."

 

je vois rien d'illogique à ça?

 

Hi Markus

I'm a bit confused by your answer here. The original question is about which part of the sentence is negative eg "it is not necessary to say it" or "it is necessary to not say it". You say "il ne faut pas le dire" means "it is necessary to not say it". I don't think that's true, but I'm not a native speaker so I'm not 100% certain. I would have thought this would be, using falloir, Il faut ne pas le dire.

Then you speak about this being the same thing as "je ne dois pas" meaning "I must not" instead of "I don't have to", which I agree with but is a totally different issue.

What I think you mean is that the first part of the sentence is the negative bit, but that the word to use in English is "must" rather than "be necessary" eg "I/you/he must not say it", which I would agree with.

Can anyone else cast their vote? How would you translate "il ne faut pas le dire" into English?

 

one must not say it or you mustn't say it.

thats my take

 

It's "illogical" because if it's falloir that's being negated, the result should be a negation of the necessity not the necessity of the negation (if that's clear). English "must" is illogical in this sense too.

 

it still seems logical to me lol. i guess i'm weird

 

Hi timpeac, just to jump in.

Don't "It is necessary to not say it" and "You must not say it" mean the same thing? Or at least, can't they under the right circumstances?

Basically my original question, like you pointed out, had to with whether falloir acts like "must" or like "it is necessary" with respect to negation. And it seems the answer is that "Il ne faut pas le dire" = "Il faut ne pas le dire" = "You must not say it". Is that right?

 

I understand what remosfan means.
"falloir le dire" means it absolutely has to be said
In Boolean arithmetic :
NOT "falloir le dire" = it has not absolutely to be said, i.e. it is not absolutely necessary to say.
The logical way to write "it must not be said" should then be "il faut ne pas le dire". This form is not used in French.

 

Yes they can. It's quite hard to use the right vocab just to highlight where the negation should fall. I didn't appreciate that it was impossible to say "il faut ne pas le dire" in French in the same way you could say "il faut se taire". I'm still slightly surprised, but more than happy to bow to the opinion of others on this, since I've never been aware of this as an issue before.

Olivier - is it potentially ambiguous, then, can "Il ne faut pas le dire" mean "It is necessary to not say it" or "you must not say it"?

 

remosfan, I agree that it seems very illogical as well which is why I was surprised when I learned it. OlivierG, just to clarify, is it correct that "il ne faut pas le dire" translates to "it is necessary not to say it", i.e. "You must not say it"? I was taught that it cannot be used as a negation of necessity (i.e. it cannot mean "it's not necessary to say it, but you could if you wanted to", i.e. "You don't have to say it"), but since there seems to be some controversy can we get this clarified? I hate it when I find out something I "know" is incorrect.

 

It is interesting to note that the construction "il ne faut pas" does not always mean "one must not."

If one places the the adverb "nécessairement" after this construction, the meaning changes.

Example: Il ne faut pas nécessairement être intelligent pour y travailler.

Translation: You don't (necessarily) have to be intelligent to work there.

Il ne faut pas appeler ta mère? = Don't you have to call your mother?

It doesn't mean "Isn't it necessary that you don't call your mother"?

It's not always the case then that "il ne faut pas..." means "one must not..."

 

What is the difference between il ne faut pas.. and il faut ne pas...?

In English, we distinguish between it is not necessary to eat and it is necessary to not eat, but in French, it doesn't seem to work the same way.

Can somebody clear this up for me?

Thanks in advance.

 

You are correct, Il ne faut pas X usually means, in fact, Il faut ne pas X or Il faut que « pas X ».

 

Thanks. So one can say both and they mean the same thing? (Provided we don't include any modifiers like nécessairement.)

 

The normal way to say it is with the negation around faut: Il ne faut pas manger. You can say Il faut ne pas manger, but it sounds unnatural, so I would recommend avoiding it in most situations.

 

Thanks so much. Was reading Grevisse all day, but figured I'd bother you to get an answer to this.

 

If I'm not mistaken, and do correct me if I'm wrong, in French 'ne pas' don't occur together, it's always 'ne ... pas'

 

Not in the situations Maître Capello discussed!

Le vase ne peut pas être rouge : the vase can't be red (it's not possible).
Le vase peut ne pas être rouge : the vase may not be red (it doesn't have to be red, it's not compulsory. It can be blue for instance).

 

Ok, so in the words of Maître Capello, "Il ne faut pas manger" means 1) It is necessary not to eat (i.e. Don't eat!) but also 2) It's not necessary to eat (i.e. You don't need/have to eat). Interesting...because the two things ain English are very different from each other

 

That's odd because 'You must not eat' is very very different from 'You don't need to eat' and they can't have the same 'Il ne faut pas manger'

 

Of course they can. Every language has ambiguous structures (and they are not necessarily the same from one language to the next). However, as explained in the previous messages of this thread, the more natural interpretation of Il ne faut pas manger is "You must not eat". In order to express "You don't need to eat", one would normally add a modifier (like nécessairement, forcément) or choose a different verb altogether (again, see above).

 

Exactly, that's what I thought. However, it is very explicit in the words of Maître Capello and I'm sure it stands. It would just be safer to use a different verb.