Danish and German are both Germanic languages, and they share many similarities. However, sometimes the same word has different meanings in the two languages. One such word is må.
In Norwegian the word means must and in Danish it means may. Here the word may expresses permission and can be replaced with can. Let us illustrate with examples.
The sentence "You must go" is Du skal gå in Danish and Du må gå in Norwegian. Though the sentence is identical in both languages, the meaning is different. To say "You may go" with the meaning of "You have permission to go", Danish uses Du må gå and Norwegian uses Du kan gå.
Though Danish and Norwegian are often very similar, there are significant differences. In certain cases, identical words havc different meanings. This is the case with the Danish word for may and the Norwegian word for must.
