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Comment by davidkuennen | Hacker News Reader

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davidkuennen·

I'm from Germany and it's really crazy to think just one cable is holding almost the entirety of our flight system.

Hopefully they fix it until next Monday. I'm having a flight to Frankfurt then.

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> fix it until next Monday

Off topic, sorry. I'm curious why Germans often use this phrasing. Is there a "false friend" [1] in English? (I assume you mean 'before', not 'until')

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

Before and until are sometimes interchangable in English.

Don't go there before Monday. Don't go there until Monday.

You can get this deal until Monday. You can get this deal before Monday. (Some lack of clarity about whether the offer is valid on Monday with until though)

But I agree, it doesn't work in this context.

English is weird.

In English one would use 'by' for a deadline and 'until' when the state or action continues up to a point. e.g. "I must finish the task by the end of the day" or "I'll be working on the task until the end of the day". In German 'bis' is used for both cases.

To continue the tangent, I'm currently learning Spanish and appreciate the really long tail involved in language learning. I often work with people who, while they do not speak English as their first language, speak it pretty much perfectly. Except for maybe a few minor "glitches", which would just never occur with a native speaker. I often wonder how pointing these out would be received, and though I presume many would be appreciative, maybe not all...

The order of adjectives in English is something you never think about, but unless you put them in a very specific order you sound crazy

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/adj...

It should not take too long to resplice all those ribbon fibers unless the site is difficult to get too the armed cable is in worse shape than just a cut.

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