Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 June 26

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June 26

Arabic translation

This is what I am trying to say in Arabic.
I love you very much Ian. Shoot me one of your sweet smiles today, they always make my day. (this is from a man to another man)
is this correct: I love you very much Ian. Shoot me one of your sweet smiles today, they always make my day. أحبك كثيرا ايان. اطلاق الرصاص على واحدة من الابتسامات الحلوة اليوم ، أنهم دائما أصنع يومي.???

That's a pretty good literal translation from my small understanding of Arabic. No one else has jumped in here, so I'll do it. I'm not a native speaker, nor even an advanced student. I'm just a beginner. However, I would expect to see يا before ايان. It makes it vocative, because Ian is the person you're talking to, and you already have a "you", so it's separate. It's also very sweet. :) I hope he likes it. Steewi (talk) 23:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Analyzing the sentence "welcome aboard"

What is the structure of the sentence? It doesn't have a subject but based on the meaning it shouldn't be an imperative sentence. Is it a declarative sentence with an omitted subject and an omitted object (something like "[We] welcome [you] aboard")? If not, how do you explain the formation of the sentence in terms of traditional English grammar rules? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.12.134 (talk) 12:18, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Nothing is omitted: "Welcome" is here an interjection, like "hello" or "goodbye".--Rallette (talk) 12:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I take the expression "Welcome . . ." to be a contraction of "You are welcome . . . ." Hence "[You are] welcome aboard", "[You are] welcome to my humble home", etc. Welcome is here functioning like an adjective.

I had thought that "welcome" itself derived from "well come", meaning something like "good arrival", but according to my dead-tree edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, although the form "well come" was current in 7-8th century Anglo-Saxon, it derives from the Old English "wilcuma", where the "wil" element meant "will, desire, pleasure" and "cuma" meant "comer (i.e. one who comes), guest." Cognates occur in other Germanic languages. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 14:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

You can't quite exclude the 'well' meaning though, both meanings are represented in cognates; the German 'willkommen' only make sense as 'will' (wille), since 'well' in the meaning 'good' would be ganz or something, whereas the Scandinavian 'velkommen' only makese sense as 'well' (vel), since 'will' is 'vilje'. But the 'will' meaning is the original. --Pykk (talk) 11:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Lay and lie

I saw a caption on a TV news program tonight – “Laying low”. I thought about it for a while, and concluded it was wrong; it should have been “Lying low”. People in my neck of the woods often use the verb “to lay (down)” to mean “to assume a horizontal position, usually on a bed”. My understanding of the differences between lay and the two meanings of lie, is as follows:

Verb or expression	Transitive/ intransitive	Meaning (rough)	Past tense	Present participle	Past participle	Examples
To lay	transitive	To place something on to something else	laid	laying	lain laid	He laid the pipes, she is laying the cement, they had lain laid the baby down, and I will lay down the law.
To lie (1)	intransitive	To be in a horizontal position	lay	lying	lain	I am lying on my bed; he is going to lie down; she lay down for a rest; after they had lain together for a while, they had sex; let sleeping dogs lie
To lie (2)	intransitive	To tell a wilful untruth	lied	lying	lied	He lies through his teeth; she lied about her age; they are lying when they say that; they were expelled because they had lied to their teacher
To lie low [lie (1)]	intransitive	To avoid being conspicuous; to be in hiding	lay low	lying low	lain low	The suspect is lying low today; yesterday she lay low; he had lain low for a week but was now back home
To lay low	transitive	To make weak, tired, etc	laid low	laying low	lain low laid low	That flu has really laid me low; and now Ali is laying Foreman low with a series of rights to the head

Then, I was wondering about the expression “to lie low”. It doesn’t literally mean lying horizontally as in a bed, but it is nevertheless lie, not lay, isn’t it? I suppose one could contrive an expression using “laying low”, but it wouldn’t mean “keeping out of the spotlight”, as the TV caption was supposed to mean. Is my understanding correct, or has the common usage of “lay” to mean what “lie” (1) is supposed to mean, trumped the prescriptivists? -- JackofOz (talk) 13:36, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, sleeping dogs are prone; they don't fib. And 'lay low' is simply a manifestation of the fact that in American English, 'lay' is used interchangeably with 'lie (1)' in the intransitive sense you indicate. Conversely, in British English, it's possible to use 'lie (1)' transitively, if the thing being laid down also lies down - such as a sleeping baby. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

"Lie low" and "Lay low" are really two entirely different expressions. To lie low means "to keep quiet and not be noticed; to avoid being conspicuous." (McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002). To lay [someone] low is "to make someone weak or extremely sad" (Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms © 2006). The Mcgraw-Hill Dictionary notes that "lay is a common error for lie," and uses "lay low" in the sense of hiding in one of its examples. I would say it's a matter of the lay/lie confusion being just as prone to crop up here as anyplace else, since yes, the correct word would be lie, suggesting lying down in a ditch or in the tall grass until trouble had passed. You couldn't do it to someone to bring the transitive into play; even if you say, gave a person the use of their shed to hide in, they'd still be the ones doing the actual hiding. If you laid them low it would mean you dropped them with a roundhouse kick or something.

Out of curiosity I looked up "lie in wait" in the McGraw-Hill, since "lie" would be the correct word there, too, but I can't say as I've ever heard anyone say anything but "lay." The dictionary gives both words in its examples, and doesn't even bother mentioning that it's technically an error. For what that's worth Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The past participle of to lay is laid. [1] -- Wavelength (talk) 21:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

@Alex Tiefling: Sorry, I put the sleeping dogs in the wrong box (I was fast becoming a sleeping dog myself when I typed this up; it's fixed now). However, I can't see that "to lie" is ever transitive. If I have laid the baby down (using the transitive verb "to lay"), then the baby is now lying down (using the intransitive verb "to lie (1)"). That the two events are related does not mean that "to lie" has become transitive.

@Some jerk: I'd forgotten about the transitive "to lay low", so tks. "He lay low for a while" is the sort of expression we tend to hear mostly, but it's the past tense of "to lie low", so the word "lay" is correct there. The present tense would be "I sometimes lie low", or "I am lying low today". But since people often confuse lay and lie, they might well say "I am laying low today", and in the next breath say "He lay low last week" (or even "he laid low last week", or even "he lied low last week").

@Wavelength: Thanks for the further correction. (See, even we "experts" can get it wrong). -- JackofOz (talk) 21:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Historically, 'lay' is a causative formed from 'lie', just as 'raise' is from 'rise' and 'fell' from 'fall'. The distinction between 'lay' and 'lie' has been eroding in recent decades, perhaps partly because 'lay' is also the past of 'lie'.