"The children talk."
Translation:아이들이 말합니다.
32 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
2489
All of these words are not simply synonyms for talking or speaking, since only one option is accepted in any given sentence. Can anyone either differentiate between the several such verbs we have been given or point out a site where one can see them differentiated?
Yes: 말 means "words", so 말하디 is "to talk" or "to say". 이야기 means "story", so 이야기하다 is more like "to tell". 대화 means "conversation" or "diologue", so 대화하다 means "to converse". Hope this helps!
- 2489
Thank you very much. That clears this up nicely. As I look at this, though, without any context, the children should have been able to any one of these things to translate "The children talk."
- 2489
Absolutely, but that means that any sentence taken out of context should be able to be translated a variety of ways, not just one.
I know for the one where the sentence was "The children talk a little." that perhaps converse might not work for just a little talk, but here it should, I would think, because even the dog and cat converse!
Look above. It is different from the version that I had on the tiles, but both are accepted.
Using 아이들은 would mean "Children", but 아이들이 means " This(these) children". 이 talks about specific things, while 은 is more general. Hope this helps.
I know this is a confusing thing for English speakers and I'm not a pro at 한국어 yet; so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
TL;DR They both can mean the same thing in this case and both should be accepted. If one or the other isn't, it should be flagged.
-은/는, to me, can translate to "regsrding" because it sets the noun as the high level subject of the sentence. It's basically setting the context to speak about children in general, as you said, but I believe it can also refer to specific nouns.
Based on that we could either translate translate "아이들은 말합니다" as "Regarding the children, they talk" or as "Regarding children (in general), they talk". The former would effectively mean "The children talk." So it should be considered a correct translation.
-이/가, on the other hand, definitely refers to a specific noun and "아이들이 말합니다" should only translate as "The children talk."
To add to this, there are other cases in which -은/는 or -이/가 would be more appropriate over the other involving whether or not you are trying to contrast this noun against others like it or if you're going to compare two specific things but that is somewhat beyond this scope of this conversation.
They are both subject particles, but I believe that 은 is mostly used when referring to yourself.
들 makes it plural. 이 is a subject marker. So 학생들이 tells us that there are multiple students, and that they are the subject of the sentence.
I pretty sure 말한다 is also accepted for this, right? I mean to native speakers we can agree that this is right and can be used in public speaking, right? Or am I wrong?
는 is a topic marking particle, which can show that the sentence is about children. 이 is a subject marking particle showing children are the doer of the action. A noun can only have one particle, so since 아이들이 already has 이, adding 는 would be incorrect.
Can someone explain why a lot of verbs and adjectives end in 하? Or is there not a specific reason for it?
Yes, the reason is that the verb 하다 means "to do" and is used to make many kinds of verbs. Here, 말 means word, 말하다 means literally "to do words", so "to talk".
