change the voice do you forgive him on his mistake?
Answers
Explanation:
"I forgave him for his faults." Why is this wrong and I forgave him his faults is
That’s a very good question right there! The rule at work here is as follows :
The preposition ‘for’ only accompanies the verb ‘forgive’ when the sentence involves the usage of a gerund (verb+ing) immediately after for:
<forgive + for + gerund (verb+ing)>
e.g.
She forgave him for losing her money.
Richard forgave Tim for betraying him.
She forgave her husband for lying.
(the gerunds here - losing, betraying, lying)
However, we omit the preposition ‘for’ if ‘forgive’ is immediately followed by a noun:
<forgive + noun>
e.g.
The bank forgave him the debt. (lucky fella :D)
Richard forgave Tim his betrayal.
She forgave her husband the lie.
Alice forgave jack his grave mistake.
(the nouns here - debt, betrayal, lie, mistake)
Your question is a case of what is called the Mother Tongue Influence or MTI, wherein a direct translation from the mother tongue can lead to grammatical conflicts in the destination language. Being a native Hindi speaker, I appreciate this conundrum, because the Hindi sentence for the same will necessitate the usage “ke liye”, which naturally would lead a non-native speaker to incorporate the usage of the preposition “for” in the English sentence. However, such a usage belies the rule in English grammar.
You can understand this further with a similar case:
There’s a very common erroneous usage amongst non-native speakers as they directly translate the text in their mind from the native-tongue, word-for-word. And the erroneous usage is the expressions “good in” and “bad in”.
E.g. She’s good in Maths, or
He’s bad in English
whereas, the correct usage always necessitates the use of the preposition ‘at’, giving you correct sentences as:
“She’s good at Maths.” and
“He’s bat at English.