# FR: il ne faut pas / il faut ne pas + infinitif



## remosfan

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.


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## Markus

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..._"


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## remosfan

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_."


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## Benjy

je vois rien d'illogique à ça?


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## timpeac

Markus said:
			
		

> 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..._"


 
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?


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## Benjy

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

thats my take


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## remosfan

Benjy said:
			
		

> je vois rien d'illogique à ça?


 
 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.


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## Benjy

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


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## remosfan

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?


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## OlivierG

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.


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## timpeac

remosfan said:
			
		

> 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?



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"?


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## Markus

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.


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## Icetrance

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..."


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## wster

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.


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## CapnPrep

You are correct, _Il ne faut pas_ *X *usually means, in fact, _Il faut ne pas_ *X* or _Il faut que _« _pas_ *X *».


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## wster

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


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## CapnPrep

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.


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## Maître Capello

Saying _il faut *ne pas*_ adds some emphasis to the negation. It stresses it as a command. But, I agree, the second sentence below would sound odd in most contexts.

_Il *ne* faut *pas* manger._ = You must not eat / It is forbidden to eat, *or* _(but less likely)_ You don't have to eat / You don't need to eat.​_Il faut *ne pas* manger._ = You have to not eat.​
On the other hand, there are cases where I would definitely say _il faut *ne pas*_, never _il *ne* faut *pas*_. For example:

_Il faut *ne pas* être intelligent pour échouer à ce test._ = You *have to* be stupid to fail this test / Only dumb people fail this test.​
which by the way means more or less the same as:

_Il *ne* faut *pas* être intelligent pour réussir ce test._ = You *don't need to* be intelligent to pass this test.​


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## NKOS

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'


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## Oddmania

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).


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## undergreenwoodtree

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 in English are very different from each other


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## NKOS

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'_


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## CapnPrep

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).


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## undergreenwoodtree

NKOS said:


> 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'_



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.


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