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 Languages

Ask questions or just talk about different languages. Since BrainKing is an international game site supporting many languages, this board can be kind of useful.

Since we will be dealing with pronunciation of words rather than their spelling, I think it's useful to have a link to The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet.


To see translations of some frequently used phrases and sentences in other languages see Languages


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6. April 2006, 10:29:08
Expired 
Ahh, my favorite board it is. My first question:

1)What exactly is the difference between 'have to' and 'must'?

When do we say we have to do something, and when we must do something?

6. April 2006, 10:30:50
Fencer 
Emne: Re:
رضا: Good question. In Czech, we have the only verb for this - "muset".

6. April 2006, 10:32:45
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Fencer: In Farsi we too have only one verb for it. But these English people are quite perfect at making verbs for themselves. I've always wondered about the difference between have to and must.

6. April 2006, 20:15:14
ScarletRose 
Emne: Re:
رضا: we have more words for the same thing and meaning then we need..

"Have to" and "Must" are the same meaning.. they just show the emotion of the user a bit more..

For instance the young child might say to his friend.. "I have to take out the trash before I can go to the movie"..

and The secretary with a dozen letters to type up and send out, while also staring at a report may say something like "I MUST get this report done before noon so that I can finish the letters" in this case.. the "must" is used to emphasize the importance of what is to be done..

I hope this makes sense!

Kewl board by the way.. Good luck with it!

6. April 2006, 10:41:34
Walter Montego 
Emne: Re:
رضا: As far as I use the words, they're interchangable in your example. Have to and must do not mean the same thing though. Have is a tricky word and has lots of meanings. Must is fairly straight forward. You left out "got" by the way.

When do we got to do something?

This isn't normally an acceptable usage as far as grammartarians will say, but like the word "ain't" it is often said.

Is grammartarians a word? :)

6. April 2006, 10:47:52
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Walter Montego: I remember when I was studying at the English institute I'm teaching at right now, we would have very confusing questions with have to and must. They'd give us sentences such as:

All of us ..... obey the traffic regulations.
I ...... buy a loaf of bread on my way back home.

Etc,.

I really didn't know in which I had to use have to an din which one must.

The examples I gav eyou are just things that came to my mind. So basically the answer to both of them may be the same.

6. April 2006, 10:52:29
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Marfitalu: That was a nice link. That 'Many authorities consider that must indicates an internal decision of the speaker, while have to indicates the presumption of an outward authority' seems to be quite distinctive. How about Ought to?

I think that's another verb used to show obligation. And should?

I think the use of these four verbs must, have to, should, ought to and the one Walter mentioned, got to will be most obvious in examples. So do you have any in mind?

6. April 2006, 10:56:54
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Marfitalu: But your choices are in contradiction with what that link says. According to the link, in the first one you must (?) use have to since it's an as the link puts it, outward authority, an din the second one, you must (?) use must since afterall it's an option.

6. April 2006, 10:57:55
Fencer 
Emne: Re:
رضا: I wonder how many native English speakers really know this difference and use it.

6. April 2006, 11:09:10
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Fencer: My assumption is that many don't know the difference, but use the options properly.

6. April 2006, 10:57:48
Walter Montego 
Emne: Re:
Marfitalu: He says it well this Mister Micawber:

"Many authorities consider that must indicates an internal decision of the speaker, while have to indicates the presumption of an outward authority, but in practice these often overlap so extensively that either will serve."

He says they're often interchangable, but do have different uses.

In your first sentence I might use either one.
In the second I would normally say the I have to buy the bread, since it really doesn't have to happen usually. Again though, you could say must buy a loaf. Both make sense.

I'm trying hard to think up an example where one of them would be definitively wrong. Maybe someone else can. I speak my own version of American English and am not school taught in the fine points of a lot of grammar.

6. April 2006, 11:04:35
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Walter Montego: Yes. The link works well. The fact that non-native speakers of a languag eknow the grammar of that language more than its native speakers do, is quite interesting. Though the language intuition is always something else.

6. April 2006, 11:14:17
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Walter Montego: You said: As far as I use the words, they're interchangable in your example. Have to and must do not mean the same thing though. Have is a tricky word and has lots of meanings. Must is fairly straight forward. You left out "got" by the way.

So now that I looked back at my post, I started to wonder if I had put my question properly. By the word something in my examples, I simply meant that you as the ones who want to answer my question are free to put the proper actions in the place of 'something' that I used. But seems you as a native speaker didn't get what I meant. So my question must have been wrong.

Quite interesting that Farsi doesn't always correspond with English!

6. April 2006, 11:19:35
Walter Montego 
Emne: Re:
رضا: "something" is a word with lots of meanings too. If you wanted to use it to mean a type of fill-in-the-blank instead as some unspecified action for someone to do, you should have explained it in a different way.

6. April 2006, 11:22:50
Expired 
Emne: Re:
Walter Montego: So this would work?

When do we say : I must buy a loaf of bread on my way back home.

And when : I have to buy a loaf of bread on my way back home.

6. April 2006, 11:38:50
Walter Montego 
Emne: Re:
رضا: I like how Marfitalu has it. If it ain't a problem but something that needs doing eventually, I'd go with "have to" or "should" or even "ought to". If it's urgent and can't wait or be denied, I'd be more inclined to say "must".

So we get back to the traffic light and external authority. We must obey the traffic signals, but some people don't think that way and would say, "We should obey the traffic signals". To me the word "must" is often times an absolute and I avoid speaking in absolute unless it really is an absolute. It should be obvious that we should obey traffic signals, we don't have to obey them. There's no must to it. A law of physics is different. It is an absolute in almost all cases. You jump off the ground, you must come back down. It has nothing to do with having to do it or should do it. It will happen and it must happen. Must implies little or no choice in the matter and the other ones leave room for different actions.

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