rone: (Default)
entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones ([personal profile] rone) wrote2005-12-08 06:31 pm
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ok, i get it

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

Anyway, English sucks, and i suck.

[identity profile] mskala.livejournal.com 2005-12-09 03:03 am (UTC)(link)
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.
ext_8707: Taken in front of Carnegie Hall (southpark)

[identity profile] ronebofh.livejournal.com 2005-12-09 07:40 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, the weird dialect of SUCK.

English, sucking, and other uses of "lay"

[identity profile] eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com 2005-12-09 08:01 am (UTC)(link)
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"

[identity profile] merde.livejournal.com 2005-12-09 09:41 am (UTC)(link)
ROFL.

[identity profile] opadit.livejournal.com 2005-12-09 02:37 pm (UTC)(link)
It's all an issue of transitive versus intransitive.

[identity profile] tritone.livejournal.com 2005-12-09 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
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.