Breakdown of Am Feiertag müssen wir nicht arbeiten.
arbeiten
to work
wir
we
nicht
not
müssen
to have to, must
am
on the / at the
der Feiertag
the public holiday
Questions & Answers about Am Feiertag müssen wir nicht arbeiten.
Why does müssen ... nicht mean 'do not have to' instead of 'must not'?
This is a famous false friend for English speakers! In English, 'must not' means you are strictly forbidden to do something. In German, nicht müssen simply means there is no obligation, so you 'don't have to' do it. If you wanted to say that you are not allowed to work, you would use the verb for permission instead: wir dürfen nicht arbeiten.
Where does the word Am come from in this sentence?
Am is a contraction of the preposition an (on) and the article dem (the). When talking about days of the week or specific days like der Feiertag (the holiday), German uses an followed by the dative case. Because Feiertag is a masculine noun, it takes the article dem in the dative case, and an dem shrinks down to am.
Why is the subject wir placed after the verb müssen?
In regular German statements, the conjugated verb must always take the second position. Because this sentence starts with a time phrase (Am Feiertag) in position one, the verb müssen stays in position two, which forces the subject wir to move to position three.
Why is arbeiten at the very end of the sentence?
This sentence uses the modal verb müssen. When you use a modal verb in a standard German sentence, it gets conjugated in the second position, and it kicks the main action verb (here, arbeiten) to the very end of the sentence in its basic dictionary form (the infinitive).
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