"One cannot know everything."
Translation:Нельзя всё знать.
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What is incorrect about "не можно знать всё"? I generally use нельзя for "impossible" and не можно for "can not", because in English, "can" may refer to permission or capability, similar to можно. Is that distinction also true with нельзя?
Practically all the russian sites I go to tell me never to use 'не можно'; you use нельзя for both "impossible" and "not allowed to".
For example:
Моей сестре нельзя есть шоколад. = My sister can't eat chocolate (maybe she can't digest it). This refers to capability.
Здесь нельзя курить. = You can't smoke here. You technically can smoke here but are forbidden by law. This refers to permission.
Kind of like how 'nor' is the opposite of 'or' but you can never say 'not or'.
I wrote невозможно and it allowed it. In all of the sentences I've seen, можно is always paired with an real subject rather than an implied one, so "He may not" rather than "one may not".
Also when I see "cannot", to me "не можно" is more like "one may not know everything" and doesn't have the exact same connotation, whereas невозможноis "it is impossible to know everything", which is the intention of this phrase.
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"Не можно" is a bad construction. You can say "Невозможно знать всё." (It's impossible to know everything).
Можно - one can
Нельзя - one cannot
What would be wrong with "Всё нельзя знать."? The only difference between this and the correct solution is word order. How can the correct word order be determined in this sentence?
It’s a correct answer. Said with a proper intonation it might be even better than the default option. In fact, 5 out 6 possible permutations of those 3 words are equally possible. Only ‘Знать нельзя всё’ sounds weird (but still grammatically correct, I believe)
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To express impossibility, as opposed to prohibition, shouldn't нельзя be used with the perfective infinitive узнать.?
Which is another way of saying "you can't fool ALL the people ALL of the time."
Знать requires an object in the accusative case. Всё is neuter and inanimate, so it stays the same in the accusative.
Not really sure why you say that the verb знать "requires an object in the accuative case... While the default (in most languages with case conjugation) is to have subject=nominative, (direct) object=accusative and indirect object=dative, it's not a 100% rule. In Russian, a typical twist to this truth is that a "negative direct object" takes genitive (aka the "non-ownership" of the non-existent thingy overrides the default accusative....if that's a way to put it. (Sorry for the lack of better wording!)
Example:
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У её кошку --> She has a cat, with кошка conjugated into accusative because it's the object in the sentence)
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У её нет кошки --> She does NOT have a cat, where кошка is conjugated into genitive because it's the "negative/non-existing object" (there's probably a better wording/explanation of this!)
У её кошку is wrong, кошка is the subject of the sentence, it should be у неё кошка
А обезьяна может? Ваше русское предложение не полностью эквивалентно английскому. Английское говорит о принципиальной невозможности знать всё, не важно кто субьект. В русском языке подобное утверждение передаётся путём отсутствия подлежащего. В английском же, в котором подлежащие не может отсутствовать, существует техническое подлежащие - one
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Никто не может знать все. Мне кажется наиболее близкий перевод к английскому варианту. Потому что обратный перевод "нельзя знать все" не получится без костылей.
Does this essentially break down to: "Cannot everything one know."...?
