Link to 1902210

Since this sentence is not owned by anyone, it had better be ignored.

Why if there's nothing wrong with it?

Well, I just adopted it. =P

We should only trust and work with sentences that either are owned by natives or have been tagged OK by them.

You shouldn't adopt sentences that are not in your native language.

This sentence has an obvious meaning. Even if it sounds less than natural for natives (who knows?) it's not the reason to not translate it into another languages. Imho.
(Personally I always rely on my understanding of the sentence: if I understand it, it sounds OK for me and I can make a good-sounding translation, I make it, nevertheless who created the original).

> if I understand it, it sounds OK for me and I can make a good-sounding translation, I make it

Quite a reprehensible practice, I'd say. Even the wrongest sentence can be understandable and even the most unnatural one may seem OK for a non-native speaker. It would be better to just add your nice good-sounding sentence alone instead of linking it to something suspicious thus saving some unhappy learner who will find this pair one day from being misled.

Everyone should decide which sentences he or she trusts. Adding a translation is not the same as tagging OK. It just means I understand it and want it to be translated.
I don't think only natives can judge if the sentence deserve to be translated or not.

The opinion that non-native speakers must have zero qualifications to check how well the sentence sounds is obsolete and ought to be purged :>D

As far as sentences inside Tatoeba are concerned, I'm sure Pfirsichbäumchen is essentially quite right. It's a well reasoned and widely respected policy of Tatoeba, that every sentence should be created or confirmed by a native speaker. This includes the possibility that non-native speakers add sentences. They may be bad or brilliant, in any case they will not be seen as trustworthy until a native speaker has tagged them "OK".

@Ooneykcall
You're right.

@al_ex_an_der
You're right, too. But the fact, someone has translated a sentence is not the declaration "this sentence is OK". I'm just against the principle "non-native sentences without OK tag should never be translated". That's all. At least, we can always unlink translations if the original senrtence will be changed.

(@NNC)

In my opinion, this sentence is acceptable in English. It is grammatically correct and might, in certain contexts, be used by a native speaker. "dropped from" might be seen by some as a little unusual here but the sentence is (I believe) OK and doesn't sound "unnatural" to me. A native speaker would probably say "fell from the tree" "fell out of the tree" "dropped out of the tree" etc. There is always more than one way to say the same thing.

I have removed "needs native check" and added "OK" tag (subject to any other native English speaker wanting to make a comment on the sentence).

(Edit: I've added OK but am unable to remove "Needs native check". I'd be grateful if someone could do this please.)

I don't understand why native speakers are considered so much better than non-natives. I know a lot of English native speakers that write awfully. The same for my native language, Portuguese. And what about constructed languages, such as Esperanto? I think that in this case only sentences by fluent speakers would be trustworthy, right? But Pfirsichbäumchen creates sentences in Esperanto very frequently and according to her profiles she has only an intermediate level.
One may also be a native speaker of a language X living in a country where he or she never uses it and after several years their ability in the native language may be way weaker than that of a fluent non-native speaker using it every day.

@piterkeo
That's a complicated question. When we say "native speakers speak a language better than non-natives who fluent in it" it's only a conventionality. Wnen we say "they sounds more natural" it means they have some slight features in speaking that most non-natives speakers don't have, even if they are perfect in grammar and vocabulary. Practically, these features aren't important for the meaning of the speech in most cases, so if you don't have a goal "speak just like a native" you can teach from non-native fluent speakers without any promlem.

The practical issue is most people tend to overestimate their abilities, and a person who tell you "I'm fluent in the language X" could be on only intermediate or even pre-intermediate level. This is true as well for constructed languages.

Indeed, sometimes it can be hard to say, if a person a native speaker of sertain language or not . I know a few people, that moved from their native countries in rather early age and their abilities in their mother tongues have decreased to a near-native level.

There is indeed something special in terms of Esperanto and native speakers. People who have learned Esperanto in early childhood as second or third mothertongue (mostly because they are children of international couples, of course) may be caught up or even overtaken by those who learn this language later in life. And the letter even don't need terribly much time to do so. Due to this fact, being a native speaker in Esperanto isn't a criterion to the same extent as in other languages.

I was intrigued by the insinuation that "dropped" sounds less natural than "fell". I came across this site which said:"Just a small number of the cherries dropped from our tree ... Many trees will go through an intentional fruit drop once the fruit has begun forming .."
The moral of the story is that what may sound unnatural is just due to our limited experience.

Can't help thinking about that apple. If it "dropped" from the tree it was as a result of being ripe. If it "fell" from the tree it might have been a windstorm.

>>> ... that what may sound unnatural is just due to our limited experience.

I think that's often very true. I often come to the same thought when pondering German expressions.

@Dejo
I read, "drop" is usually used with words that describing how it falls. For example "drop with a clatter", "drop clumsily", etc. Maybe, that's the reason, some people consider it "less than natural"...

What about the difference between constructed and natural languages, we should remember there are dead languages like Latin, that has no native speakers anymore. What about them?

We can say: Esperanto is an unique language, it has no native speakers, so everything that is not against its rules is correct. We can't sound "less than natural" when we speak Esperanto.
But actually English is an unicue language, too. It already has more non-native speakers than natives. And this gap is obviously going to increase. The majority soon or later establish its own rules. Actually, there is English as a national language (British, American, Australian, etc) and there is English as an international language. The second don't have to match with the first in every detail. Those people, who say: English is a bad choice as an international language, because I will never speak like a native, are wrong. Everyone don't have to speak like a native at all! Today English has taken the place which Esperanto could take. It's just a fact, even many people don't like that. We even don't have to invent "the new simpler English". Existing grammar rules and vocabulary are sucsessfully applied for estimating speaker's ability (like IELTS, TOEFL, etc). All we should do here, is to divide these two languages: national English and international English.

A ripe apple dropped from a tree ... will get smashed on the ground.
So don't drop ripe apples from trees, (especially not from high oaktrees) and.. don't post silly comments (not referring to the ones above) ;)

I agree with Selena777, English is not simply a natural language with sentences we should expect from natives. It is the main international language, the current lingua franca, and so it is closer to be a "second language to everyone" than Esperanto. Despite all the utopian dreams of Esperantists, Esperanto is very far from being a real international auxiliary language. It is more like a constructed language used by Esperanto enthusiats, just like Star Trek fans using Klingon. English is the real international language of our time and most of what we read and hear in English is not written or said by native speakers.

Another thought on apples dropping: The verb "drop has two meanings:drop
dräp/Submit
verb
1.
let or make (something) fall vertically.
"the fire was caused by someone dropping a lighted cigarette"
synonyms: let fall, let go of, lose one's grip on; More
antonyms: lift, hold on to, pick up
deliver (supplies or troops) by parachute.
"the airlift dropped food into the camp"
RUGBY
score (a goal) by a drop kick.
(of an animal, especially a mare, cow, or ewe) give birth to (young).
informal
take (a drug, especially LSD) orally.
"he dropped a lot of acid in the Sixties"
2.
fall vertically.
"the spoon dropped with a clatter from her hand"
synonyms: drip, fall, dribble, trickle, run, plop, leak

So in the sentence above "drop" has the second meaning. Since the verb "to fall" in instransitive it sounds more natural to some people.

(I'll ignore all the comments about Esperanto)

@Dejo
I think if we use "drop" in the second meaning, it's intransitive, too.
It's funny that one word can be used in the two different meaning, like "foli-foligi" in Esperanto.

Certe vi volis skribi "fali-faligi".

Yes. My idea is it's ambiguous. It can mean "the subject fall" and "something/someboby makes the subject fall". In Russian it's two absolutly different concepts.

Estas avantaĝo, ke ni povas uzi la anglan lingvon.
Mi ŝatas tiun fakton.
Esperanto havas kelkajn avantaĝojn, kiujn la angla lingvo ne havas.
Ankaŭ tiun fakton mi ŝatas.

Mi ne konsideras la anglan kaj Esperanton kiel konkurantojn.
Ambaŭ povas suplementi unu la alian.
La avantaĝoj de unu lingvo povas kompensi la malavantaĝojn de la dua kaj inverse.
Ni pensu adiciante opciojn, ne reduktante ilin! ☺

It is an advantage that we can use the English language.
I like that fact.
Esperanto has a number of advantages which the English language does'nt have.
I like that fact too

I do not consider English and Esperanto as competitors. Both can supplement each other.
The advantages of one language can compensate for the disadvantages of the other and vice versa.
Let's think adding options, not reducing them!

If Esperanto is as utopian as Klingon, why Google Translate provides translations in Esperanto, but not in Klingon?

Why there are more than 200.000 articles in Esperanto on Wikipedia versus 0 in Klingon? (Well, Klingon has indeed it's own Wiki — not inside Wikipedia — with today 199 pages.)

At the moment 32 languages have more Wikipedia articles than Esperanto. 254 languages have less. Are these 254 languages (even) more “utopian” than Esperanto?

And what about Tatoeba? Is there only English less utopian than Esperanto? Looking on Tatoeba I disagree with you for sure; there Esperanto isn't only not utopian; it's kind of popular and considered quite useful by many.

A better question is, why Esperanto out of a good bunch, as I understand, of constructed languages? It would be more popular, but is it "the best" for whatever purpose it's meant to serve? Or have you simply gotten used to it? (but then it negates its ambitions of being the perfect language for worldwide communication)

The only reason I can see for so many sentences in Esperanto, or wikipedia articles in Esperanto, is because Esperantists are eager to translate everything into Esperanto. And I'm not saying that Klingon or any other language is utopian. Esperanto is. Klingon speakers don't want to turn Klingon into an universal language. Esperanto speakers are like Christians, which want to turn everyone into Christians too.

> Esperanto speakers are like Christians, which want to turn everyone into Christians too.
I guess you have met some of them. The bad news is: I have met them too.
Instead of telling you good news I ask you a question. Do you believe that all Esperanto speakers are thinking this way? I'm convinced that learning and using Esperanto has very often proved enriching and usefulI for those who have decided to learn it. But neither I nor the overwhelming majority of the speakers of Esperanto I know are arguing for making learning Esperanto compulsory for everybody. One of the advantages of Esperanto is that nobody is forced to learn it. That shouldn't be changed. I personally would like to see Esperanto as an OPTIONAL part of the curriculum in schools.

I cannot see any reason to put Esperanto as an optional part of the curriculum. I'd rather have French, German, Russian or Japanese.
I have met many of them, and even the "good guys", like you say you are, are always spreading the "wonders of Esperanto" everywhere. Don't you hold Esperanto almost like a religion? You are even using the Esperanto star as your profile picture.

:D The star! You have caught me! I really don't like any waving off green flags and stars at all. But just a few days before I decided that I should have a new picture and indeed I've chosen the star. This one I found kind of cool. ;-) But, believe me, any kind of "esperantic religion" I do not need. ☺

There is nothing wrong with translation Wikipedia into Esperanto.
Learning Esperanto can be practically useful in some cases, one just should know what he/she wants to get using it.
But it seems not reasonable for me if someone's willing to die or go to a prison for Esperanto, like it seems not reasonable if someone's willing to die for religious stuff like how to crosses themselves by a right way, or which words use for praying, etc.

I wonder which Wikipedia is more informative: Esperanto or Simple English?

@Alexander
The star is cool. But the pink one would be more glamorous :)