>She retorted against him.

This is not a great sentence because (1) "retorted" generally is used with direct speech and (2) the person to whom one is retorting would probably be preceded by "to" rather than "against". For instance,

"This was your idea," she retorted to him.

or simply:

"This was your idea," she retorted.

However, I can't think of a good replacement that would also fit the translations that have been linked to it.

I think the Japanese means "She talked back to him." in English. Is this expression natural?

That suggestion is good, maybe

Thanks for checking, Miles.

Are these OK, too?
She answered him back. [?]
She answered back to him. [?]

She answered him.
She answered him back.
She replied to him.
She responded to him.

φ(..) note note

Seeing as this sentence is part of the Tanaka Corpus, do you have a problem with changing it to "She talked back to him", @JimBreen?

@small_snow, what did you mean by "φ(..) note note"?

> what did you mean by "φ(..) note note"?
It’s her way of saying she learned something new, and she’s mentally making a note of it
Direct translation from Japanese expression

Thanks, @DJ_Saidez.

@CK, if you're going to take the time to tell @small_snow that "talk back to someone" doesn't have the same conotation [sic] as "reply to someone", why don't you tell her what those connotations are, and which ones better match the linked Japanese?

And given that you use Japanese and English every day, and presumably know which English matches the Japanese, why don't you simply update this sentence yourself? While you're at it, you could leave comments on all the linked sentences, if you think that's necessary.

Thanks, Alan, Miles.
As Miles said is right. I didn't have enough time to reply at that time, so I put an emotion. It seems to have puzzled you. Sorry, Alan. 🤭
Perhaps @sundown has puzzled too?

By the way, @CK, is your comment to me? If so, I think I understand correctly about the difference in meaning between "talk back to someone" and "reply to someone".

I commented with the following thoughts:
"言い返す" can be interpreted in many ways.
For example:
(1) Simply a response to what the other person has said.
(2) To respond to disagree with the words or assertions of the other person.
(3) To say again what we said before.

So I thought what @sundown said isn't wrong. Also, I wanted to know where to put an object(him) with "answer back" (Is it better "answered him back", or "answered back to him"?) His comment covered everything I wanted to know. That's why I wrote, "φ(..)note note" (As I said above, unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to reply to him at that time, so I just put an emotion.)

Also, even though I said "'言い返す' can be interpreted in many ways", when most Japanese use "言い返す", they mean (2).
(2) To respond to disagree with the words or assertions of the other person.
So I first suggested a sentence with the word "back".

Is my understanding correct? And which one seems to fit best for the Japanese sentence?

The current sentence is poor English, and should be changed. As @CK there are issues with the other sentences linked to it, which have probably been translated from it.
The Japanese can just mean "reply" but can also mean "retort; shoot back; answer back". I think the verb 言い返す is more usually used with the latter nuance.

Now I think I understand, @small_snow.

"φ" is the Greek letter phi, and parentheses are used after a Greek or Latin letter to indicate a mathematical function. So "φ(..) note note" looked to me like "phi is a function whose definition is 'note note". All of a sudden I felt as though I were back in school! :) I didn't realize that "φ" is used as an emoticon, and even now I know that it is, I'm not sure what it's supposed to represent. Gratitude, perhaps?

I think in place of "note note", a native English speaker might write "Got it, thanks" in order to indicate that they understood what the other person was saying.

φ(..) is a little person, and the psi is a hand holding a pencil ^^

Ah! Thanks for the explanation!

@small_snow

> Perhaps @sundown has puzzled too?

I've seen you write ""φ(..) note note" before. Although I had no idea what the symbol meant, I did guess correctly (it seems) what you meant by "note note" because I'm a jammy sod. :)

https://www.collinsdictionary.c.../english/jammy
https://www.collinsdictionary.c...ry/english/sod

:)

@sundown
>I'm a jammy sod.
Is this what you mean? 🤔
- I'm a lucky person.
------
or
- I'm a positive person.
Perhaps ....
- I'm optimistic.

@small_snow

Here, it means that I guessed correctly, but this fact was more because of luck than judgement, skill or knowledge.

@sundown
OK. φ(..) Got it thanks!