Er lässt sich nicht beraten.
He won’t take advice.Das lässt sich nicht machen.
That can’t be done.Ließe sich das machen?
Could that be done?See 39.3d (p. 95) for the Subjunctive II forms of modal verbs and 40.4b (p. 105).
35.7 muss + negative and darf + negative
As noted above (35.6b), these have meanings which are easily confused by English
speakers: ‘must’ is rendered by müssen, ‘must not’ by nicht dürfen, while nicht
müssen means ‘does not have to’:Sie darf kein Darlehen aufnehmen.
She must not/is not allowed to take out a loan.Sie muss kein Darlehen aufnehmen.
She doesn’t have to take out a loan. (But she can if she wants.)For this use, see 86.4 (p. 316).
Note an alternative to nicht müssen is nicht brauchen zu + infinitive (‘does not
need to’):Sie braucht das Darlehen nicht zurückzuzahlen.
She doesn’t need to repay the loan.See also 86.4 (p. 316) on this use and 39.3d (p. 95) on müsste.
35.8 Two different patterns involving modal verbs
Note the existence of these different patterns and their completely different functions.
They are a source of difficulty because English speakers often use the same construction
‘would have’/‘could have’/‘must have’ etc. for two distinct purposes: ‘He could have
gone to Oxford’, for example, could mean ‘I think it is possible that he did’ or ‘There
was the possibility, but it didn’t happen’. In German these two meanings are expressed
using two different structures.(a) The muss gewesen sein/muss gesagt haben pattern expresses an assumption or a
deduction on the part of the speaker about an event assumed to have taken place in the
past. The speaker voices the possibility or the probability that something really did
happen in a certain way. This pattern basically follows this special use of the future
perfect for expressing assumptions (e.g. wird gewesen sein/wird gesagt haben, see
34.4, 89.1), but uses a modal verb instead of werden.muss/soll/kann (etc.) gewesen sein vs.hätte sein müssen/sollen/können (etc.)
muss/soll/kann (etc.) gesagt haben vs.hätte sagen müssen/sollen/können (etc.)35
VERBS