[Magdalen] To Lay and To Lie.

[Marion Thompson]

All of the aforementioned usages drive me mad.  I’m not the grammar police, but without rules all is chaos, never mind if the language is in flux. Change is inevitable, but not on all fronts and all at once!

Marion, a pilgrim, luxuriating in The Day of Resurrection

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Grace Cangialosi
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2019 10:58 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] To Lay and To Lie.

Oh gosh, I hadn’t thought about that for a long time! I may have been spelling them the same way...

> On Apr 20, 2019, at 10:47 PM, Christopher Hart <cervus51 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I’m sorry, but I refuse to give up on the distinction between who and whom.
> I also bemoan the other justified complaints in this thread. One of my pet
> peeves lately is people who don’t know that discreet and discrete are two
> entirely different words that merely sound alike. This, of course, is
> mainly a problem in written English.
> 
> On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 5:04 PM cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> The people I interact with each day seem totally unable to handlethe "to
>> lay" and "to lie" differentiation.  The same is true with written
>> materialthat I read regularly.  I realize there is overlapping of these
>> verb forms.I suppose that there is little hope this situation will change
>> because 90%
>> of English speakers in this area confuse the verbs and the majority of
>> thepopulation never hears them used in the traditional grammatical way.
>> I suppose, since users/confusers of these verbs seem to communicatequite
>> well despite the grammar "problem," we will find that this mattergoes down
>> the path of the "who/whom" confusion, where grammarians havegiven up
>> completely.
>> And another verb irregularity:
>> In this region, there is a situation in which a majority of the population
>> rarelyemploys the third person singular of the verb, "to do."
>> "Does/doesn't" isalmost absent. Does turns up in such as "He does play the
>> piano,"  But the
>> in negative usage, it reverts back to "He don't play the piano."
>> I guess I should chalk it up to the evolving English language.
>> 
>> David Strang.
>> 
> -- 
> 
> Christopher Hart
> 
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