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Makiasan Posted 14 years ago
Grammar
talk to / talk with
Which sentence is more natural? Or is there no difference?
" I always talk to my friend " (1,010,000 results on google)
" I always talk with my friend " (5 results on google)
" I always talk to my friend " (1,010,000 results on google)
" I always talk with my friend " (5 results on google)
Top answer
I am absolutely flabbergasted that there are so few hits for the second form, and I can think of no reason why that should be. It is quite common in conversation, I am sure. 'Talk with' suggests a lengthier discussion than does 'talk to'.
- I am absolutely flabbergasted that there are so few hits for the second form, and I can think of no reason why that should be.
- It is quite common in conversation, I am sure.
- 'Talk with' suggests a lengthier discussion than does 'talk to'.
- Here are some slightly different statistics from Google: Talk to — About 357,000,000 results Talk with — About 92,500,000 results Obviously, we don't talk to others at length anymore: it is another victim of texting and internet technology, I suppose.
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6 Answers
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I am absolutely flabbergasted that there are so few hits for the second form, and I can think of no reason why that should be. It is quite common in conversation, I am sure. 'Talk with' suggests a lengthier discussion than does 'talk to'.
Here are some slightly different statistics from Google:
Talk to— About 357,000,000 results
Talk with— About 92,500,000 resu
Here are some slightly different statistics from Google:
Talk to— About 357,000,000 results
Talk with— About 92,500,000 resu
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"talk to", unlike "talk with", can also suggest one-way communication. "talk to" also seems to be more personal and is more likely to used when talking to a friend, which might explain the prevalance of "talk to" hits as compared to "talk with".
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The Corpus of Contemporary American English has about 14,500 citations for 'talk with' and over 65,000 for 'talk to'.
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"Talk to" (meaning to have a conversation with) was the normal British expression until recently. "Talk with" is American, though widely used in Britain now. The same is true of speak to/with. In Britain, there were no implications that talking to was one-sided. "Talk at (one or more persons)" is also in use to express that the conversation is one-sided, but usually in a facetious way, as in "Bill
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