mmasny
Key Member
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2009
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Polish
- Home Country
- Poland
- Current Location
- Poland
In Polish we have a distinction between 'not can do sth' and 'can not do sth' (I translated it literally, leaving the word order unchanged). In the first 'not' negates 'can' so it means 'cannot do sth', in English. In the second 'not' is related to 'do' so it means 'do not have to'. It often causes problems, for as you see the Polish 'can not' means something different from English 'cannot'.
So my question is: can I say 'I don't have to do it' using the verb 'can'? In fact I would find it very wierd if I couldn't and I think there must be a proper word order or something that allows to negate 'do' instead of 'can'.
So my question is: can I say 'I don't have to do it' using the verb 'can'? In fact I would find it very wierd if I couldn't and I think there must be a proper word order or something that allows to negate 'do' instead of 'can'.
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