You are of course right that “müssen” and “must” are cognates and closely related. The meaning of both words is often the same. However, they are by no means ALWAYS the same.
Said no mother ever
Geil,
Even your grammar book proves my point…
17.5.1 "necessity or compulsion"
17.5.2 “must” or “have to”
Which is lowest on the priority and at the end? “have to” in the number 4 spot.
Which is used the least, and only as a subordinate to “must”, and cannot be included for the purposes of representing “müssen” when haben is also in the sentence? “have/had to”
Here are also two more discussions… where “have to” is repeatedly (when used) a subordinate or weaker version to “must” or mustn’t, or another form of obligation/requirement.
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Modal_verb.html
So what is my point again, a point that I thing you have repeatedly told me with - seeking other sources and grammar books and extensive immersion with the German language in usage, not to rely on learning German grammar or translation from Memrise or as is also the case Duolingo.
What is the driving factor of this discussion as it has become? Improper, inconsistent, higher prioritization of “have to”, or lazy translation of müssen into English by these 2 sources of language learning (Duo & Memrise) that get more usage/user than any grammar book could ever dream.
It would therefore appear, that neither I or yourself (or Amanda) are wrong, but it is Duo & Memrise, that are consistently (greater than 75% - probably closer to 90%) of the time teaching incorrectly, when it comes to müssen. By this metric, Duo & Memrise get it “right” between 10% & 25% of the time. Nur ein bisschen Duo/Memrise ist richtig! Die meiste Zeit sind sie falsch.
I am not certain, why you or Amanda, who both agree Memrise/Duo are far from definitive instruction resources for learning German, are thus arguing so strongly for “have to” when the overwhelming amount of evidence does not support it.
To each their own I guess. I may not know the correct or certain answer, but I tend to be pretty good at picking out what is wrong… especially when it is repeated and not always grouped together.
My mother didn’t need too. She was a good German and backed those words with a wooden spoon! There were many days, with a sore butt, me in tears & a room being picked up… but I learned the meaning of must. 
I see & hear every day (& smell) what happens when mothers “give up the good fight”, turn towards avoiding conflict and allow their children “self-attonomy” in decision making. Maybe German kids are learning this watered down meaning of müssen! Or maybe they are unfamiliar with the proper use of a wooden spoon! 
I think it is safe to say, American children are a good 20 years “ahead” in this regard!
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My point with quoting your example was that it seems to me to be a very UNtypical example of how “must” is used
It is an example that you made up and doesn’t reflect actual usage.
As for the wooden spoon anecdote: I am not going to enter a discussion on parenting here, that is for sure 
You have drawn me into your obsession, @HansWT
And I now find myself using this resource (the British National Corpus) and I am trawling the entry for “must” …
Here is the link:
So far, it has been quite interesting, I must say (which, incidentally, would be translated as “muss ich sagen”, because German and English are indeed close relatives).
I would recommend that you look for German corpora online, HansWT, because the grammar books (the ones I know best are about English) often contain assumptions which have NOTHING to do with how the language is actually used or spoken.
One example I can quote from English is the word “any”. In all of the grammar books I have seen, the gospel goes thus: “any” is used in questions and with negatives, examples used are “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” and “I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
A glance at any corpus (note that I just used “any” in a completely different sense from that explained in the grammar books? And I can tell you that this use of “any” IS in the dictionaries, but it is NOT in course books, text books or grammar books. NOWHERE.
Any idiot knows that any grammar book on any bookshelf is full of mistakes, assumptions and half-truths. The difference between “some” and “any” in English is a semantic one that becomes clear when you read a LOT of English and have a good understanding of the language.
And it would seem that the grammar books are not terribly right about “must”, either. Glancing through the corpus examples, it would seem that “must” is used extremely often in the sense of “it can be strongly assumed” 
“must” often appears in specific grammar patterns, too, the most common one I have seen being, “must + have + past participle” (he must have been, it must have taken, etc. etc.)
“You must” appears a couple of times, but in this case, the “you” is like the German “man” - a general word - and is not used to address a single person. “You must be over 18 to …”
The other common phrase is “you must be joking”, which can be translated any number of ways (note again the use of “any”, being used to mean “unlimited”, not in the way described above from the grammar books), but, to my knowledge, it would normally be translated without “musst”.
Some examples that come to mind are “du machst wohl Witze!” or “das ist doch wohl nicht dein Ernst!”. Note how the word “wohl” comes up in these translations, which is commonly used in translating some meanings of “must”.
So, basically, reading grammar books can be VERY misleading and the best way to get a feel for a language is to expose yourself to massive amounts of the language as it is really used - by reading and listening to authentic material in the target language. Memrise can be an excellent tool to amass a large basic vocabulary quickly and efficiently, enabling you to read and listen to authentic material without too much difficulty. THIS is what will help you to master those conjugations and endings, noting phrases that contain the grammar you need to master or understand better. And to note the translations into your native language. Good language learners and users are the ones who learn lots and lots of lexical chunks.
Audio books, films, regular books, newspapers etc etc, will give you an authentic version of the language and you will pick up the lexical chunks you need to translate typical everyday phrases, such as “you must be joking” (du machst wohl Witze) and “you must never forget that” (das darfst du nie vergessen). Note that “müssen” is not used in either phrase and that in the second phrase, “das darfst du nie vergessen”, another one of those tricky modal verbs (dürfen) is used instead of our “must”.
Banging on and on and on about “must” being the same as “müssen” isn’t going to get you anywhere.
I have not argued strongly for “have to” as “THE” translation for “müssen”. I have said that “TO HAVE TO” is the commonly used translation of the INFINITIVE form, “müssen”.
There is quite a difference between these two statements.
“der Kindesmissbrauch” is the correct word, just FYI.
Excellent point!
The translations can only ever be approximations of the original word.
One last link:
I was seeing if I could find a translation of “that must be the postman” and got this page from dict.cc:
http://www.dict.cc/?s=that+must+be+the+postman
Lots of interesting examples here, too
You’re last link is an examination of ‘that’, not ‘must’.
And in every example where ‘pronoun + to have + something else’ returns ‘pronoun + conjugated müssen + something else’, English ‘must’ can replace ‘to have’ and simplify the sentence.
In the other results where dürfen or sollen or können are returned from ‘have to’, obviously müssen is not intended.
And when there is a secondary possession aspect to the sentence, where haben or to have appear in addition to müssen, sollen, dürfen, können, etc., one must then exclude the presence of ‘haben’ or ‘to have to’ in the sentence as a translation of ‘müssen’.
So what is the wild card? What is the subordinating, secondary, or lower intended meaning or translation on the prioritization tree? It is ‘to have to’, not ‘must’. Must is at the top.
Then back to what I have said and provided the examples (all of them that matter) - Duolingo and Memrise, in their official & unofficial courses (like than aided/created by geil) are wrong every time they translate any use of müssen to ‘to have to’, and even worse is when they put ‘to have to’ before ‘must’ when they define or introduce müssen early on.
I am not examining grammar books for critical review. I am examining Duo & Memrise which are more consistently falsch than richtig - as thier courses ARE teaching people.
And what is worse, these corrections to be consistently richtig instead of consistently falsch are only a few keystrokes in the databases, not rewriting an entire language.
And I have to say, I am increasingly being turned of to Memrise for the following reasons… which means I will likely stop being a paying member and also stop trying to improve courses to aid other learners like myself…
I have now found 3 courses, where I have been substantially invested into to (+ 500 words or phrases) only to find an ‘improved’ or duplicate course afterwards.
1 is the official German courses, A1 & A2 --> G1-G7 series.
2 is/are the Duo courses, sentences or vocabulary - that Geil has invested a lot of time in, but the old ones are still present, active & learners are using them like myself that do not know they shouldn’t.
3 is the Huber Menschen course. This one I already invested substantial time into editing, correcting, improving, only to find there is an ‘improved’ version which was a duplicate of the original with substantial additions added (as in all the ‘lesson’ chapters of a 2 book series that was not included in the original course). But both courses have ‘dead/inactive’ creators and both have about equal numbers of active users - that don’t know about these forums. Once I get into this ‘improved’ course, I will need to go and correct every mistake/issue again, as it was simply duplicated for original source course.
The old adage goes, garbage in, garbage out. And regardless what other failings/lackings/issues Memrise has… I don’t want to learn garbage, when it is obvious to even a learner it is garbage. I don’t want to be exposed the first time to something that is wrong, because first exposure sticks, whether it is right or wrong.
It’s sad that you have found so many faults with memrise and the courses here. Those experiences of finding duplicates and revamped courses that you hadn’t known about must have been frustrating.
You are right that “must” as a possible translation of “müssen” is under-represented, although it really doesn’t bother me that they have neglected “must” in this context. That is really not a big issue from my perspective.
I hope you will find other ways to improve your German that are enjoyable and which you feel are an accurate representation of both German and English.
Babbel and LinQ are good, apparently, but they are not free.
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