Now I Lay Me

In English, "lie" is a present tense intransitive verb. That means that things can lie or lie down, but they can't lie something else down. You have to lay something (or someone) else. "Lay" is a transitive verb. Not so bad.

The past tense of "lie," however, is "lay," as in: "I lay down in the barn but could not sleep for all the mooing."

The past tense of "lay" is "laid."

So I laid a blanket over all the cows. That shut them up.

This distinction may seem not only arbitrary but wilfully confusing; it's certainly going out of fashion. But I was comforted to learn today that the confusion is not native to English, but inherited almost directly from German. It's their arbitrariness and illogic, not ours.

In German, "liegen" is the intransitive and "legen" (pronounced LAY-gun) is the transitive. The past tense of liegen is "gelegen" (guh-LAY-gun) and the past tense of legen, "gelegt." Somehow, everything makes sense when you can blame its nonsense on someone else.