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How do you say "to hit back"?

fra Polaris,2010 6 18

Meldinger: 12

Språk: English

pohli (Å vise profilen) 2010 6 23 07:53:08

Polaris:... (as in, a little girl hits her brother, so her brother turns around and hits her in return) ...
An example:

La eta knabino batis sian fraton, tial li sin turnis kaj rebatis ŝin.

If you write something like this, it's clear who hits who and who's first and who's next. So it's actually no problem that "rebati" doesn't show the direction of the beat, because "ŝin" shows it.

If someone beats again, I'd say "bati denove/ree". "re" as a prefix can mean both "back" and "again", but for me "rebati" sounds a little more like "to hit back" and "bati ree" sounds more like "to hit again".

It's better not to try to translate single words or phrases exactly but to translate the meaning of a whole sentence and try to explain the meaning with the features of the language you use, not with the features of your own language.

ceigered (Å vise profilen) 2010 6 23 08:02:24

It should be noted (possibly redundently) that "re" means "again". It is not attached to a certain person, or action, it merely means an occurance has reappeared. Whether it's the same person doing something twice, or whether it's someone doings something back, is a meaning contained in the context of the rest of the sentence, not in "re".

The same technically applies to "venĝibati" and all similar forms - who is getting revenge is only clear by the context of the sentence, "venĝi" does not contain that context itself.

In the phrase "La knabo batis la viron kaj li tiam venĝbatis lin", the boy could have actually done both actions to the man, maybe the boy hit the man, the man said something rude to him, then the boy hit him again for revenge (after all, revenge goes along in a cycle!).

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