I was talking about what happened to me a few years ago. When I said, "I got surprised to find out ….., or "The plant got damaged because of the typhoon." my sentences were corrected by a native speaker of English like "I was surprised" or "The plant was damaged." I was told that the first two sentences wouldn't sound natural. I'd like to know why they don't sound natural. Could you explain that, please? I wonder if it has someting to do with the time.
Learn English – The difference between get + pp and be + pp
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A few days back, the toy broke.
To emphasize the event.
Usually implying that it had broken on its own.
Sometimes just used to tell the story of what had happened after.
A few days back, the toy was broken by someone, somehow.
To emphasize the event.
Probably because you want to place blame.
A few days back, the toy was broken.
To emphasize the state of the toy.
As the listener, I would generally expect the follow-up to be, "But it's not broken now" right after the above sentence.
A few days back, the toy had been broken.
To emphasize the state of the toy again.
However, this time, as the listener, I'm left in suspense about the state of the toy now. So my follow-up now would now, "And now? Is the toy still broken now?"
The reason you're having trouble is because you should use passive voice here, not "got."
Hopefully, this also helps you hear the difference between having used the simple past and past perfect.
I suppose a more modern-day equivalent of 'Don't you bulge?' would be
Don't you have a belly?
The woman's soft, sensual, round belly, beloved and immortalized by artists such as Rubens and Titian has surrendered, for some time, to the very flat and tight washboard stomach or the six-pack abs.
On the other hand, a pooch belly can be quite attractive. The Urban dictionary provides a work-safe definition which I rather like
Region of a females lower stomach that appears as fat around the belly button and has little or no lovehandles. Women sometimes develop one after childbirth even if they are skinny. Other women develop one from age or lack of exercise which is normal and affects all bodytypes in varying degrees. Can make some women look more desireable even if they feel the opposite or try to cover it up. Also known as a pooch.
Lucy was always slim until she had her baby and now she has the cutest pooch belly.
Apparently, the term has been in use since at least 2009.
Best Answer
From BBC Learning English...
There are many other constructions where "correct" (idiomatically "normal") use of get may be tricky for learners, but we're focussing here on get + adjective. Taking OP's examples plus a few more...
I would say #6 and #7 are usually "non-idiomatic" because many native speakers wouldn't use get there unless they specifically intended to convey the sense that she was in complete control of her emotions at the time (and was trying different approaches to "win" the argument).
Even I can't decide whether #9 is "idiomatically acceptable" - it seems to be some kind of borderline case for me, but no doubt others will draw the line somewhere different. All I can say is few native speakers would accept #2 or #4 above, but exactly why some usages of get are okay and others not is obscure.
TL;DR: Many aspects of how to get is used are subtle and/or not universally recognised (see the US "got" vs "gotten" distinction, for example, which is indifferently honoured by those BrE speakers who've now adopted the latter term).
My advice to learners is not to be seduced by the idea that frequent use of got will make you sound more like a native speaker. Usually if you get it right no-one will even notice - but you're bound to get it wrong sometimes. And although native speakers will invariably notice the "errors", they probably won't point these out to you - precisely because they don't know how to explain what's wrong in simple terms.
In short, learn the appropriate use of less informal/slangy alternatives like was, became, turned, went, and stick to these except where you often hear native speakers using got. Don't simply gravitate towards got because it seems like you can just learn one verb for all contexts. Unfortunately, it's not that easy!