"तुम किसी से बात क्यों नहीं करते?"
Translation:Why do you not talk to anybody?
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Could this not mean "why don't you talk to somebody" instead of "anybody"?
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Can a Hindi speaker or a moderator explain the difference in the translation of "Why don't you talk to somebody?" vs. "Why do you not talk to anybody?" Thanks!
In English they mean different things. "Somebody" would suggest a certain person or type of person, and sounds like you're suggesting they speak to someone. Less of a question, more of a suggestion. For example, if a friend is going through a bad time then you may say "Why don't you talk to somebody (about it)?" "Anybody" is general, it comes across as more of a question. For example, you may ask a very quiet person "Why don't you speak to anybody?" You are not suggesting they should, and you're not suggesting a certain person or for a certain reason.
I'm wondering this too - कोई wouldn't be the solution because किसी is just the oblique form of कोई
Seems odd can anyone tell me If this an example of Subject/ object/ verb construct in this sentence and that's why it may sound harsh to English ears?
Yes, it is verb final. The word-for-word translation is: "You someone with talk why not do" It's tricky because usually for "talk to someone", you would essentially be saying "do talking with someone", so in a sense बात is the object, even though intuitively the object would be किसी/someone.
Also, in Hindi the question word often comes right before the verb, and so here it is kind of splitting up the complex verb phrase बात निहीं करते So there's a lot going on in the word order that is very different from English.
Most English speakers will go out of their way to avoid a construction such as this if at all possible. No matter how you justify or rationalize the grammar, when all is said and done it still sounds awkward -the semantics are all wrong, the word "anybody" should not have to be put in that position, for one thing.
First thing is, it would have to be तुम्हारी बात.
For this sentence, something like तुम्हारी बात करना can be used to mean something like "talk about you", so किसी से तुम्हारी बात करना could mean something like "talk to someone about you." But the trouble is, since तुम is also the subject here, you can't have तुम तुम्हारी बात. This would be no good for similar reasons to the fact that in English, you can't say "you talk about you." To get that meaning you would need अपनी बात (the reflexive form, like "about yourself". (In both of those cases you'd probably be more likely to use तुम्हारे/अपने बारे में बात करना for "about you/about yourself")
But for the original sentence here, if you're not mentioning what's being talked about, you wouldn't want anything before बात. बात करना just means "talk"
