Inedia

Howdy folks, I'm new here

I was wondering if you could help me out with this thing in German: am I allowed to say "es braucht es zu machen" meaning "it needs to be done" or "it is necessary to do it".

Thanks a lot!

Didier48

No, not at all. „es braucht es zu machen" is not possible.

It is necessary to do it = man muss es machen or: es ist nötig/notwendig, es zu machen.

But:

It is not necessary to do it = man braucht es nicht zu machen or: es ist nicht nötig/notwendig, es zu machen (just negative)

You may use „brauchen“ in the impersonal form just in these connection:

It takes time/a while, until I catch a cold = es braucht Zeit/eine Weile, bis ich mich erkälte.
It needs not much, to make him happy = Es braucht nicht viel, um ihn glücklich zu machen

hope you got it?

salut, Didier

Inedia

Hey Didier48,

Thanks a lot for your help. Yes, I got it .

The thing with German is that I approach it the exact same way I approach Latin and (ancient) Greek, where a similar costruction is quite normal. Since German's got cases too I tend to think with the same principles of Latin and Greek. In fact I was unable to find anything like that in my German dictionary.

Thanks for the further notes too.