"اَلْكَلام مَعَ أَبي بَعْد اَلْظُّهْر"
Translation:talking with my father in the afternoon
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the verb "to talk" in English requires the preposition "to"... "talk with" is bad English... I know that using "talk with" may help students understand مع، but you guys cannot dismiss good English as wrong answer
1623
Both "talking with" and "talking to" are perfectly valid American English. Some people like to maintain a distinction where "talking with somebody" is when you both talk in good faith with no motive but entertainment or sharing information, whereas "talking to somebody" is when you dominate the conversation and use it as an attempt to resolve an issue you have with the other party.
I don't like talking with my father = I don't like chatting with him about random things.
I don't like talking to my father. = I don't like resolving conflicts with him through confrontation.
I also wrote "talking to" and it was officially wrong.....this is just stupid!!!
- 1011
I would half-agree with DuiliodeAl. I'd say it's more natural to use "to" after the verb "talk", but nowadays people sometimes feel that using the preposition "to" sounds, as tsuj1g1r1 said, too much like "talking at", so they, wrongly in my opinion, correct it to "with". And I have to admit I too am sometimes guilty of that. But of course tsuj... is referring to American English, while I am English English, so there may be a difference. But I bet the Americans and the English have the same hypersensitivity to using "to" in this context.
Yes it is, and "talking" here is used as a noun as well. It's not "I'm talking". It's the act of talking. Both the meaning of the Arabic sentence and the English one sound awkward here. I don't know what they chose to include such a sentence.
- 1011
Yes, SamirShaker, "talking" is a noun. When a noun is formed from a verb with - ing added, it's called a gerund (= verbal noun), or it can be part of a verb, namely the present participle , as in - as you said - "I'm talking" "he's singing", "we're laughing". It's unfortunate that the two look identical. English grammar is weird. You often can't tell, just by looking, what part of speech a word is.
- 221
'talking with' and 'talking to' mean the same. I think the first is American and the second British
"Talking with my father after noon." Why is this wrong? I think both should be correct.
- 1623
Theoritically, that could work, but if they accepted it, you wouldn't learn that "the afternoon" is actually a specific time in the day, so I don't think they should accept this translation anyway.
Either they should accept both answers or explain it somewhere. Anyway thank you. Your comments are always helpful.
I thought about translating that phrase as "in the afternoon," but the literal translation is "after noon" which in English could mean any time at all after noon -- it could be that evening, or that night or next Tuesday. So is my translation -- talking with my father after noon -- wrong or just not preferred?
- 1623
"ba3da DH-DHuhr" usually refers to a specific time, just like "afternoon."
That said, in Arabic, people often use the five daily Islamic prayer times to divide the day into periods:
فَجْر = dawn = about 1am to 8am-ish
ظُهْر = noon = about 11 am to 2 pmish
عَصْر = afternoon or evening = 3 pm to 6 pmish
مَغْرِب = dusk = 6pm to 8pmish
عِشَاء = evening/early night = 8pm to 12 amish
The time values here are only approximations, but it's meant to show that with these words, it can be hard to find an exact match when translating to English. 3asr can be translated as both "evening" and "afternoon," because we just divide the time differently.
So if I wanted to say "talking with my father after the DHuhr prayer", will it be the same sentence in arabic?
Then why is it wrong when i type the same as the answer, is it the capital letter i make the t