Who is the father? — of the sentence, I mean. ☺

I wish you'd explain in greater detail what exactly is unnatural about this sentence, Mr. CK. That would be rather helpful, I fancy. I find speech naturalness to be a flexible thing; we in the Russian corpus often find ourselves differ in our ideas of what sounds natural and what doesn't.

I just changed : got -> had.

Is this what was wrong with the sentence?

I googled, and I've found many sentence with "had a miscarriage" and no one with "got a miscarriage".
I'm not native and not fluent in English, but I'll try to exress my own opinion.

When you say "I got something" it sounds like you own (owned) something. For example, you can say "I got pregnant", "I got married", "I got drunk" etc, as you got some new conditions. But if someone have a miscarriage it's more about to lose, than to get something. Maybe, that's the reason, it sounds not natural.

@CK, then how can we say this sentence in a natural way? please point out the mistakes in sentences and corrections when you see them, not just say that the sentence is unnatural or with a poor quality without proposing how to improve the quality and correct the mistakes

It used to be unnatural, then it has been corrected.

I think we need to understand that it's not easy to point out what is unnatural even if one feels something is wrong, and that it's even more difficult to make a good sentence out of a sentence that doesn't sound very natural. At least for me, and I know CK has the same opinion. When we ask native speakers to evaluate a sentence, we should give them at least three options: "good", "bad" and "I'm not sure." It seems too violent to me to say "If you think it's wrong, correct and make it good." Native speakers, even professional teachers are not competent enough to be always able to do it. If we really care about the quality of a corpus, we should respect the gut feelings of native speakers, even if they cannot explain them.

There are loads of teaching materials that include unnatural sentences even though they have been checked by native speakers. I imagine the native speakers just read the sentences and changed the ones they know how to improve. That's not enough to make really trustworthy materials.

I don't trust native speakers who say they can correct (and translate) everything. Maybe they're a genius. Most of the time they must be overestimating themselves and producing unsatisfying sentences.

I trust CK because he doesn't always give us a clear answer.

@Dreamk33
I'm not professional at English, but I think, yes. I didn't find any sentences with "got a miscarriage", but I found a lot with "had a miscarriage" and "comfort him/her".

@tommy_san
I understand, what you mean.
Howerer, I think, we should distinguish "sentences, that not sound natural" and "sentences, that not sound beautiful".
If I see a single Russian sentence that sounds like it was "created by a foreigner", I can always point the way to make it sound like one, "created by a native". Another matter, sometimes it sounds not beautiful even after my correction. Sometimes I can say: "This sentence is not very good, but I can't suggest the better version". Actually, it means, the sentence doesn't really sound like "created by a non-native". I can say the same about some sentences, created by natives as well.

Selena777, i try to do the same with italian. if i see a sentence from a learner that sounds unnatural to me, i try to come up with a sentence with the same meaning that i would personally say

I can say more, there are not a little doubtful sentences, created by native speakers.

I asked native Italian speakers to check my sentences on forums, and they begin to argue among each other what is wrong and what is right in my sentences.

In the other hand, sometimes I see some Russian sentences, that seems so unnatural to me, that I think, "It was definitely created by a beginner". But when I take a look, who created it, I find out, it was created by a native.

We all are not perfect even in our own languages, we shouldn't forget that.
I believe, only good quality management system can keep such open projects in good order. Maybe, we should spend more time, checking the sentences, that already exist, not only adding tons of new ones...

I don't really like the idea of simply 'trusting the gut feeling' since it is based on your own experience, and is thus much limited compared to the 'total language experience' the natives possess collectively as a people.

If you feel there is something wrong with a given expression, there is always an identifiable reason why (at least that has always been the case with me); only often it takes quite a bit of pondering to figure it out and then formulate properly. Letting others know the reason gives them invaluable insight into the delicate workings of the language you speak, which they could hardly procure otherwise.

/Opinion:/ If you can't be bothered to put the idea you have on the subject into words, then really I think you aren't treating your own language professionally.

/whining and wallowing/
Селена, it's like you aren't even trying to get out of this unhealthy habit to be hypercorrect about your English punctuation. These pesky commas turning up where they shouldn't be is making me cringe and wince. :(

King’s English, British English, Scottish English, Irish English, American English, Canadian English, South African English, Australian English, Indian English... Is there a universal pattern for Natural English?

"Maybe, we should spend more time, checking the sentences, that already exist, not only adding tons of new ones..."
I guess you are perfectly right, Selena.

Sorry, if my words seems like rude. I don't want to offend anyone. I understand, for many people it's much easier and funny to create something by theirselves than correct other people's work. :)

@ Ooneykcall
Well, for me it can be really hard to put my thoughts into the words... I envy, if you can do it easy :)

Really? I like commas, they help me to separate my thoughts... Reading long English sentences without any commas is so difficult to me... :(

Unfortunately for us foreign pals, English doesn't use commas to join clauses and separate attributes the familiar way (and Russian's especially heavy on that, maybe too much even), so good English is quite low on commas in comparison.

Meanwhile, I wonder what more people have to say on the matter yet!

"I wish you'd explain in greater detail what exactly is unnatural about this sentence, Mr. CK. "
"Maybe, we should spend more time, checking the sentences, that already exist, not only adding tons of new ones..."

In a perfect world we definitely could focus on it... But in real life we have hordes of contributors who neglect common sense adding sentences in languages they are not proficient in without even bothering to ask some native speaker if those sentences are any good before adding them. If we continue this way we'll end up spending all the time checking this kind of sentences instead of making natural and well-sounding contributions and translations into the languages we know well.
Before accusing a native speaker why didn't s/he provided enough explanations it's maybe better to ask yourself why ever one needed to spoil Tatoeba adding such a dubious sentences. It's a matter of elementary respect for other's labour and time not to mention Tatoeba dependability.
Sorry for straightforwardness.

You are certainly right.
Still I humbly beg a native speaker not to let me die of curiosity: What is/was it?
(Just to sign up for this thread)

@Selena777

I don't want to see Russian sentences that native speakers don't find beautiful. "Beautiful" might be a misleading word, but I think you know what I mean. "Hello," "Thank you," "Shut up," "I'll kill you." are equally beautiful in this context, as long as they're used by native speakers.

Stilted sentences (usually a literal translation from another language) written by native speakers are perhaps worse than those written by non-native speakers since people are more inclined to assume that people actually speak or write that way.


> I believe, only good quality management system can keep such open projects in good order. Maybe, we should spend more time, checking the sentences, that already exist, not only adding tons of new ones...

I agree. We need a better system for that. And we need to discuss how to do it.


@Ooneykcall

Maybe you're different, but I don't have a clear knowledge about how I speak and write my language, and much less knowledge about how other native speakers do, so it often happens that I can't find the expression that I'd use or hear in the same situation.

> I don't really like the idea of simply 'trusting the gut feeling' since it is based on your own experience, and is thus much limited compared to the 'total language experience' the natives possess collectively as a people.

Will you agree if I say "collective gut feelings"?

> /Opinion:/ If you can't be bothered to put the idea you have on the subject into words, then really I think you aren't treating your own language professionally.

What should a humble amateur of languages (like me) do then?


@carlosalberto

> King’s English, British English, Scottish English, Irish English, American English, Canadian English, South African English, Australian English, Indian English... Is there a universal pattern for Natural English?

Of course not. That's why I think we should stick to the knowledge and feelings of each user. I'd love to see, for example, a speaker of Australian English commenting on a sentence written by an American that they wouldn't use the sentence themselves. That doesn't mean, of course, that that's a wrong or bad sentence. It'd also be nice to hear from some other Americans that they, too, would use that sentence. I wish we had a system that enables us to do this kind of thing easily.

I wouldn't be so strict with people who add the sentences in other languages they feel pretty comfortable with. This way they are not so ignorant to produce the sentence with the google-translate-quality, but they cause some interesting discussions and help other people to learn new things about this language.

Unfortunately said common sense completely ignores the fact that if a sentence in any language other than the most popular ones is most likely not going to be translated any time soon if ever in your lifetime. I'd say "unless you ask somebody to translate it", and the situation would be fine, but people don't seem to accede to such requests from anyone they don't know particularly, since everyone is busy and can't be bothered. I can have thousands of original Russian sentences and I bet not a hundred of them ends up translated before the end of the year unless somebody takes this up specifically.

This isn't reason enough, of course, rather a rant. The real reason that it's silly to trust blindly a "gut feeling" of a single person on their language if you don't trust blindly your own feeling on your language, and it is silly to trust your own feeling blindly because you can't be aware of everything so you can't be infallible. This means that "it feels unnatural" needn't be reason enough to do anything unless accompanied by some explanation/insight, however concise it may be. I suppose that often a sentence or two explain it all.

Lastly, you talk of some perceived disrespect but stating something with no elaboration could just as well be qualified as "disrespectful", so this is a futile line of argument.
/Opinion:/ Don't preach about things you aren't best in.

As a postscriptum, it's not like an experienced language user hasn't acquired some inner understanding of hir own, even though evidently not on the native level. This generally enables them to produce sentences of the kind they're familiar with without much trouble.

@tommy_san
>Maybe you're different, but I don't have a clear knowledge about how I speak and write my language

Well, I said it "takes quite a bit of pondering to figure it out and then formulate properly". I assumed, of course, that it is well within the capability of a generic "language amateur" (which implies greater proficiency with languages than that of your average Joe) like you and me to determine a possible reason for any simple fact of one's native language after some deliberation, though, naturally, usually we can't point one out right off the bat. I wouldn't know, though, maybe Japanese is more difficult with that than European languages?

>Will you agree if I say "collective gut feelings"?
Yes, but from the look of it we hardly have a large pool of speakers of any given language here besides the most popular ones. For example, how many active Japanese contributors are there except you?
If like four people, none of whom tend to be of the same opinion as a matter of course, tell me that won't do, then I suppose it won't do. Until then, if that won't do please tell me why.

>(put the idea into words)
I mean when expressing it. There can't possibly be any problem with having vague notions since that's how our minds work. If you do, however, find words to express your position, then kindly find some to outline the idea behind it, too.
That's a nasty idea in terms of effort put in it, I realise, but a fair one. That's what I stick to.

@tommy_san
"I don't want to see Russian sentences that native speakers don't find beautiful."

Well, we all are not Pushkins nor Dostoevskiys to create only "beautiful" sentences. :)
Beyond those simpest sentences, that you mentioned, there are many more complex ones. Some of them are too literal translations from another languages, some of them are colloquial forms, that are not popular in our region, but maybe they are popular in another regions... Perhaps, some of my sentences seems like "not good" to someone. I'm sure it related to the English corpus more than to Russian, cause English is more variable.

"Unfortunately said common sense completely ignores the fact that if a sentence in any language other than the most popular ones is most likely not going to be translated any time soon if ever in your lifetime."

I completely agree with it. Be honest, I'm not sure that CK would load tons of sentences there if almost no one understood nor translated them.
P.S. Nothing personal, only phylosophical thinking...