LL-L "Grammar" 2005.02.28 (09) [E]

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From:  Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.02.28 (02) [E]

Ron wrote:
>One of my personal favorites is imperative (moet nie >) _moenie ... nie!_.

Actually, this is what people from the Hannover area say - my father,
uncles, and other relatives would always tell me "Musst nicht!" - "Must
not!" - when they did not approve of what I was currently doing (flicking my
oldest brother's ears springs to mind, hee hee, but then he started it). I
haven't heard this in any other part of Germany.

Gabriele Kahn

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From:  R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Grammar

Gabriele (above):

> Actually, this is what people from the Hannover area say - my father,
> uncles, and other relatives would always tell me "Musst nicht!" - "Must
> not!" - when they did not approve of what I was currently doing (flicking
> my
> oldest brother's ears springs to mind, hee hee, but then he started it). I
> haven't heard this in any other part of Germany.

Oh?!  And I was told that people in Hanover speak "the purest High German"
...  (One of 'em red herrings ...)

Actually ... Thanks for rekindling my memory and for setting the snowball
back into motion!

They do say it elsewhere, at least in Hamburg Missingsch German they do.  In
actual fact, this is the very reason why Afrikaans _Moenie ... nie_  ( <
_(jy) moet nie(t) ... nie(t)_ "(you) must not ... not") impressed me so when
I was ... what? ... about seventeen (like last year or so) and had found
that "cool" textbook somewhere (for which I've been searching for years).
(My mental reaction was something like "Wow! They get away with talking like
that officially, even with writing it!" a reaction I often had in my early
days when encountering Dutch and especially Afrikaans, bearing in mind that
we had been indirectly taught that our own Lowlands varieties were dirty poo
and should die or be at least hidden.)

In Missingsch and its immediate derivatives you say _Muss nich ..._ (< _(Du)
musst nicht ..._ "(Though) must not ..."); e.g.,

Muss nich immä dåzwüschnreedn!
You mustn't interrupt all the time!
or
You shouldn't interrupt all the time.

It may be used in an advisory or cautionary sense, implies that the speaker
prohibits or cautions, not someone else.  Well, I feel that in many or most
cases it does.

A bit like:

Nu lassoch må (< Nun lass doch mal) das Dåzwüschnreedn!
Come on! Quit butting in now!

Middas Dåzwüschnreedn mussu endlich må aufhöörn.
You really do need to quit interrupting.
OK, you may quit interrupting anytime now. (sarcastic)

Whereas the following is more likely to imply prohibition by someone else or
categorical prohibition imposed by the speaker:

Du darfs nich immä dåzwüschnreedn.
You may/mustn't not constantly interrupt.

The pronoun and the verb may be omitted if the objectionable act (like
flicking of brothers' ears) is clear:

Muss nich!
("Mustn't!")

I guess it originally meant something like "You ought to stop it," but I
feel the best translation of its current meaning is American "Cut it out!"
It's virtually interchangeable with _Lassas!_ (< Lass das! "Let/leave it!"),
or _Lassas sein!_ (< Lass das sein! < Lass es sein!* "Let/leave it be!").
However, I still feel that _Muss nich!_ tends to sound less threatening,
more like "Come on now! Cut it out already!"

[* Missingsch lacks the neuter pronoun _es_ and uses _das_ (meaning also
'that') instead, analogous to the corresponding LS dialects which lack
_et_/_it_ and use _dat_ instead, much like Afrikaans uses _dit_ (originally
'this') for what in Dutch is _het_ and then ended up using _hierdie_ for
'this'.]

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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