ok, i get it

[rone]

mskala and eejitalmuppet had brought up my misuse of "lied down", although in an insufficiently explanatory way, so i turned them away.  merde pointed out that "lay" is the past tense of "lie" (meaning to recline, not to dissemble).

Anyway, English sucks, and i suck.

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I didn't explain beyond suggesting the replacement "lay" because I honestly thought it was a simple typo. It didn't occur to me that you might not know it was wrong. I figured when you declined to change it that maybe your character was supposed to be thinking in some kind of weird dialect or something.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, the weird dialect of SUCK.

English, sucking, and other uses of "lay"

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Tenuously apropos of which, I remember an incident from my student days, when a friend introduced his German girlfriend to his parents. His very straight-laced, big-in-the-church, no-sex-out-of-wedlock-or-you-burn-in-Hell parents.

"Ja, Davie is teaching me English: 'I lay Davie, Davie lays me...' Also, "fuck" is quite a rude word, ja?"

Re: English, sucking, and other uses of "lay"

[merde.livejournal.com]

ROFL.

[opadit.livejournal.com]

It's all an issue of transitive versus intransitive.

[tritone.livejournal.com]

I blame the nursery rhyme "Now I lay me down to sleep". It would be easier to remember that "lay" is the past tense of "lie" if "lay [object]" weren't a present tense transitive verb as well.