Yea, I was going to type "some soft drink", but I thought it would be closer to the Japanese if I left it as it is.

As soft drink/alcohol/juice are all interchangeable, the way I see it.

I believe that CK is right here. A soft drink is *a* drink. "I drank soft drink" does not work.

Yes, but "a soft drink" would refer to a bottle of soft drink or something. "some soft drink" is more natural and accurate, I think. I shall change it.

I disagree. I think that "drink" needs an article in the large majority of cases, including this one.

I'm going to NNC this sentence so that we can get more native speaker opinions.

As an American English speaker, I think that "I drank some soft drink" sounds unnatural. It sounds natural to say "I drank some soda" or "I drank some pop", but nobody would ever say "I drank some soft drink".

It may be because "soft drink" is a more formal term; the more likely explanation is that "soda" and "pop" can be used as mass nouns, the same way you can do with "sand", "water", "wood", etc. But unlike those terms, "soft drink" normally refers to a single discrete entity, the same way as words like "car", "building", "head", etc.

So, some suggestions, which sound natural to native speakers where I come from:

"After taking a bath, I drank a soft drink."
"After taking a bath, I drank some soda."

"After taking a bath, I drank some of my soft drink." (This one deviates more from the Japanese phrasing, 湯上がりに、私はジュースを飲んだ)

Kebukebu said it much better than I can as far as the 'a' goes.

However in casual speech we rarely say 'pop' or 'soft drink'. Basically we typically just name the drink (which doesn't help the translation here). Otherwise the nearest equivalent for colloquial speech is probably "fizzy drink".

After taking a bath, I had a fizzy drink.

My bad, didn't mention that "soft drink" is quite natural in normal speech in Australia. I recognize that "soda" is the norm in America. "fizzy" is also sometimes used, but I never use this term. To make it sound even more colloquial, I would say:
"I drank some soft drink after I got out of the bath."

Personally, I would never say "a soft drink" as this sounds too formal to me.

> It sounds natural to say "I drank some soda" or "I drank some pop"

More the former than the latter, IMO. "Pop" is a mid-western thing, isn't it?

Personally, I never use "soda" or "pop".

Both soda and pop (but especially soda) are American things. In the UK it could be fizzy drink although that doesn't work well with 'some'.

We should probably ask for wma's opinion, so that tomkun can have some Australian backup. Otherwise, we're just bullying him around ;-)

(or Jim's)

re: @needs native check
This seems to be a dialect difference, it sounds unnatural to me. To this native Brit, "I had a (soft) drink after taking a bath" is possibly the most natural, with or without the soft. That said, it would be more normal for us to specify whether the drink was hot or cold.

The problem in my view is "drink some soft drink" has "drink" twice. That is distinctly unnatural. If it were instead "drank some soda", that might be acceptable. It's still odd, because it's a first person sentence, so clearly the speaker knows what the beverage was . Better yet would be "juice" (like the alternate sentence) or "Coke".

Is there any native English speaker who will claim to say this exact sentence: After taking a bath, I drank some soft drink.

Also, I would not accept soda and juice as being similar enough to link these sentences.

I would like to see Tatoeba introduce dialect markers. Australian/British/American English should be identifiable, and we should be able to submit and comment on such different intelligibly.

In my part of the world (USA, Southern California) we would find this sentence off (but I cannot guarantee it would never be said), yet I know the whole soda/pop/coke thing is quite dialectic. I tend to prefer "soft drink" as a whole serving for an individual, not something that takes the partitive. So you may have a soft drink, but not some soft drink, as I tend to use/hear the language.

@chajadan
Have you ever drunken drinks when you already were drunk after drinking Pre-drink drinks? Being drunk you shouldn't drink drinks. :D

@chajadan The problem here is not one of dialect, in my view. Rather, there are three other problems.

First, we wouldn't use "drank" together with "soft drink" unless we were trolling. Instead of "drank" we could say "had".

Second, "soft drink" is a bizarre word choice. In a first person sentence, the speaker knows what kind of drink it was, so why not say that?

Third, this is mostly an attempt to make an English version of a Japanese sentence, but it's a word-for-word translation. Predictably, it resulted in unnatural English.

Questions of "coke vs. soda vs. pop" creep up in general, but in this example we can punt on them, because there are enough other issues.

@orcrist -- we seem to see things rather differently =)

On point one, I have no problem whatsoever saying "I drank a soft drink". That's fully natural to me. Only when writing for English class do I ever start to get picky about unintentional alliteration.

On point two, "soft drink" is not a bizarre word choice for me and I hear it get used. I don't always refer to my soft drink by specific brand. After all, a kid's meal comes with a medium soft drink. Not a medium coke, not a medium beverage.

Point three makes sense to me, and I'll take your word for me.

My only issue with the sentence at all is the partitive being used with soft drink. I accept "a soft drink", "some soft drinks", "your soft drink", and "the mother of all soft drinks", but I do not personally accept "spilled some soft drink", only "spilled some of my/the soft drink". It sounds nearly as off to me as "I ate part slice of pizza". Nearly.

I for one do not know this to not be dialectic in nature -- which is why I asked if ~any~ native English speaker would accept this sentence.

I have no problem with this sentence. (Australian English)

"I drank some soft drink" is fine. It just means that the drink has no alcohol in it, and "some" is fine, just meaning an unspecified amount. We don't say "pop" or "soda" as a general term to describe soft drinks.

"I had some soft drink" would also be OK.

That's all it takes for me! Thanks @patgfisher -- this could be marked OK. I would also recommend a tag of "Australian English".