"This is not something well thought out."

[jbrener]

Is it wrong to say "Questa non è una cosa ben pensata."?

[peter2108]

I have been on the Word Reference forums about this one. questo non è qualcosa di ben pensato is considered OK but not very natural. But the natural thing to say would be Questa cosa non è stata pensata bene. The translation of which is This thing has not been well thought out.

The Duo English sentence This is not something well thought out is actually not a sentence a native English speaker would be likely to use.

This happens often in Duo and I think that there is a tendency - I certainly have it - to linger over oddities too much.

The question remains, which Duo has always been coy about, how many sample sentences are computer generated from templates.

[jbrener]

Interesting and useful but I'm surprised by the preposition "di" in "....qualcosa di ben pensato...".

I think that the lingering is an important part of the learning process - both for us and for Duo.

I suspect that all sentences are computer generated with occasional editorial adjustments by the staff.

[peter2108]

You migfht take a look at the discussion is at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2676818&p=13509000#post13509000. di seems to be recommened.

You are of course right, we do need to linger, that is what we are doing now! But a lot of the sentences that the computer generates are just a bit odd or off-centre and we can get confused poring over those ones.

For instance there is the notorious "There is water in the salt" (sic?) which really throws early stagers.

BTW don't ever mention Google on the WordReference forum or PaulFromItaly will really lay into you. Merciless he is.

[Voltaic117]

Why doesn't "Questo" work here? Am I missing something?

[jbrener]

I think whether one uses "questo" or "questa" depends on the grammatical gender of the referent. Therefore, to refer to "cosa" (f), one uses "questa".