"אנחנו מדברים ומדברים והם לא עושים כלום!"
Translation:We talk and talk and they do nothing!
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Just a nitpick, but כלום does not mean nothing. It means "an extremely small amount". But most people don't know that.
True, so לא עושים כלום is not actually a double negative. But in spoken language כלום is used as "nothing", for instance: what are you doing? כלום.
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It actually means 'something' according to this article: http://hebrew-academy.org.il/2012/08/08/כלום-ושום-דבר/
I was taught in biblical hebrew that prefix vav can also act as the "but" conjunction, not just "and". Would this apply to modern hebrew too? Seems a bitter translation here to me.
I wouldn't say that vav can be "but" any more than the English "and" can. I think that in both languages, people would often use the simple conjunction "and" in contexts of "but", just with clarifying intonation.
This should have been correct: We talk and we talk and they don't do anything!
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I wrote they don't do anything instead of they do nothing and was marked wrong. Someone needs English lessons.
Why isn't "they don't do anything" accepted but "they do nothing" is? In English we don't typically use the latter.
How do we know when its an AND or when its a HE...It sounded like הוא before the 2nd "talk" מדברים
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Saying הוא מדברים makes no sense, because הוא is singular and מדברים is plural, so there should never be confusion there.