--responding to @needs native check--
"He is telling a lie."

Hi Shiawase, thanks to taking care of the @need native check
For sentences which belongs to no one, you can correct them directly if you want by adopting them :)

Not necessarily. It depends on context.

"Everywhere he goes, he tells a lie."

@sysko: Bad timing on my part. ;-)

@Shiawase: You can add "He is telling a lie." as an alternate translation to the Japanese sentence. :-)

@Zifre: yeah during a moment I've tought I had vision problems ^^

@sysko
I am hesitant to correct something that already has links (to other than Japanese or Irish.)
And some sentences don't quite call out to me. :)

@zifre
I would argue that without qualification of some sort "he tells a lie." sounds a bit strange.

who moved the furniture?!? :)

> I would argue that without qualification of some sort "he tells a lie." sounds a bit strange.

True. My example wasn't very good. How about a present narrative:

A: So, he goes out into the hall, and is met by 17 angry armed guards.
B: How does he escape?
A: He tells a lie. He tells them that he is just the janitor, and the thief is still inside.

It's all about context. ;-)

> It's all about context.

Indeed. I can see it's acceptable English. I'm just thinking that when that sentence pops up as an example for "lie" in a dictionary search, it doesn't have any context.

Actually I wonder about all these really brief sentences from the Tanaka Corpus. I think the students figured out they could get through their work quota quicker with short sentences. However in my opinion they often shed little light on the vocabulary or the grammar. /end of rant