So the first two expressions (1) in the formulas of transmission—namely, “I heard” and “He related to me”—are valid for anyone who heard (2) the report alone, directly from the shaykh’s own words.

Restricting (3) the verb ḥaddathanī (4) to material heard (5) verbatim from the shaykh is the usage that has become standard among the hadith scholars.

[The Difference between Taḥdīth and Ikhbār]
There is no difference between taḥdīth (6) and ikhbār from a linguistic (7) standpoint, and claiming otherwise is an excessive affectation. Nevertheless, once the technical convention (8) was established it became a recognized customary meaning, which therefore takes precedence (9) over the purely linguistic sense. This convention (10) gained currency chiefly among the scholars of the eastern lands and those who followed them; most western scholars did not adopt it, and for them ikhbār and taḥdīth are synonymous.

If the narrator employs the plural—using the first formula in the plural form, such as saying, “He related to us, so-and-so” (11), or “We heard so-and-so say,”—