なくて

Is there someone who can explain the expression 銀行へ行かなくては行きません。I have to go to the bank. Thanks.

Hello. Well, let's start from the end on the sentence. 行きません　（though the stem would be more apropriate:　行けません） - a phrase that means "it is no good / it is bad" なくて - is the TE form of 無い（ない） => 行かなくて = not to go Ok, now...the phrase is a fix one: ~te wa ikemasen / ikenai / naranai -> it is no good if I don't do something. So here, your sentence would literally mean: It's no good if I don't go to the bank => I have to go to the bank. Hope this helps :D - Coddo

Thank you for your reply. I would like to invite you to copy and paste some japanese text here http://nihongo.j-talk.com/kanji/ with the option detailed word info. I have my reservation for the results.(I did this for the dialogues I posted on this side) Thank you

Hmm, interesting site actually. But the correctitude of what the 'detailed work info' shows still has to be worked on, Quite a few odd mistakes, but hope they'll fix them and make the dictionary better.