Lay and lie….

nightowl

No Maw it’s not, but I don’t know whether grammar is taught in schools now (though my daughter assures me it is)

As a former German teacher, I know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs isn't taught in English. Pupils find "ich liege" and "ich lege mich" a struggle.

JackyB

Just what I was going to say, Maw.

I don't have any problem confusing them because the German differentiates and there is no way you can mix them up there.

"Legen" is pronounced "Lay-gen" and can only be used in conjunction with an object (including, of course, a reflexive pronoun). It describes a movement.

"Liegen" is the same sort of word as "stehen", to stand, sitzen, "to sit". They are intransitive and do not require an object. In fact, they just can't have an object, and stand alone.

Ich liege (I am lying (down)) is a complete sentence.
Ich lege (I am laying) requires something to finish the sentence.

What about 'ich lege mich hin' and 'ich setze mich hin'? I suppose the reflexive pronoun becomes the object or accusative case thus the transitive verb then has an object although you are performing the action on yourself. Fascinating language.

Some time ago a neighbour visited me. I offered her a cup of tea
Neighbour: I don't drink normal tea now. I prefer erotic tea.
Me: Umm...I've never tried that.
Neighbour: You should. It's very relaxing.
I still haven't tried it.

Greta

Thank you for the acyrologia, maw. Hilarious. I taught German and French at a secondary school in Hampshire. In our MFL department we often had visits from other subject teachers who wanted to check grammar points with us. When I started to learn English at the age of 10 the first book we were given was a book of English Grammar. I still have it. My English husband said he never had a grammar book. And he was in a grammar school...

I never had a grammar book as such, until I started teaching EFL - and that was a whole new world of things you don’t think about as a native speaker, or even as a learner of MFLs. Question tags, first, second and third conditionals….

But grammar was perfectly well taught - or absorbed, anyway, inc. via the learning of foreign languages, inc. Latin, which we all did for 2 years at my school. After that it was Classics, German, or extra English,

I still think a lot of correct usage may be absorbed by reading - and the books don’t need to be ‘literature’ - or by hearing it around you. It was my mother who told me how to tell when ‘I’ should be ‘me’ as in e.g. ‘between you and I’ and she was someone who often regretted that she hadn’t been better educated.

My brother-in-law used to tell his dog to Lay down!

My mother left school at 14, and had no further formal education, but she never made grammatical errors or malapropisms. She must have been well taught at school, first in Scotland then in Surrey, from 1914-23.
I learnt grammar from her, then at school, both junior and secondary, especially from my Head teacher and my Latin teacher.
As a teacher of French, my pupils used to say that they only learnt grammar through Modern Languages.
I must admit though, that my grandson at Key Stage 2 was taught English using all sorts of terminology I had never encountered.

My daughter is head of English in a secondary school and her degree was in linguistics (which to my untrained eye seems to be grammar with some other interesting stuff thrown in - she’d kill me for saying that).. She’s passionate about grammar and tells me there is a return to it in the curriculum. I’m going to ask her whether they teach the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs in her school.

I used to teach the Literacy Hour in primary in the early 2000s which brought in some grammar. Not sure if it still taught but I just loved doing Haydn Richards with my children and even the naughtiest boys loved writing out the exercises and getting them right. Those were the days.

If someone uses ‘lay’ when it should be ‘lie’ I always want to say “Eggs or bricks?”. I think I saw that first in a Miss Read book.

A lay-in sounds like a flock of chickens planing a coup