Answers
Jun 22, 2014 - 12:56 PM
acostar is to lay down, so fueron a acostar: "they went to lay down". "Ellos se acostaron" is "they laid down", so when in the context of going to bed, both are fine!
Jun 22, 2014 - 04:40 PM
Ahh - now I get it. That makes perfect sense. Muchas gracias Fabrice.
Jun 22, 2014 - 11:57 PM
I know I'm being an English stickler, but it's "they went to lie down", and for the past tense, "they lay down". It might sound funny, but it's grammatically correct; although, more people would probably say it the way you wrote it.
Jun 23, 2014 - 08:14 AM
Hey Eric; it's not really a Fluenz issue, but I agree, that is one of my pet peeves, the misuse of lie/lay. News anchors don't even get it right.
Jun 23, 2014 - 04:04 PM
I still do those mistakes after learning English 38 years ago and living in the US for 18 years!!! Thanks for the correction :)
Jun 23, 2014 - 06:32 PM
@ Fabrice - Please accept my apologies if I offended you. I absolutely commend you on your language abilities. I'm not even close to being fluent in a second language. Obviously correct grammar is not a must when speaking in all situations (otherwise you might seem overly stuffy and formal). The lie / lay verbs give most Americans trouble, and I certainly can't fault you for that. I'm sure you speak better English than some Americans! I just wonder what would happen if I went to Paris and used incorrect grammar. Are Parisians as forgiving of grammatical mistakes as Americans are? It's been my observation that most Americans are very forgiving of grammatical errors made by those learning the language (as long as we understand the meaning). Is the same true in most places? I'd be curious to know what others have experienced in their travels.
Jun 24, 2014 - 02:02 PM
hahaha absolutely not, i like being corrected! That one lay/lie is a tough one, too. In Paris, as long as you try, they will forgive your poor grammar.
Jun 24, 2014 - 02:14 PM
You're a good sport Fabrice. In my experience only about 10% of NATIVE BORN Americans get the lay/lie thing right. Don't know about "real" English speakers (i.e., in the UK).
Jun 25, 2014 - 07:24 PM
Hi DYerks,
Thanks for your question. While it's not wrong to say ¿Se fueron a acostar?, we changed the sentence to ¿Se acostaron? as we hadn't taught this structure and it's not necessary since "acostarse" already means "to go to bed".
This change will be available on the updates page shortly. You can access the updates here: http://commons.fluenz.com/downloads/s...
If we can help further, please email us at: [email protected]
Cheers,
Fluenz User Support
Thanks for your question. While it's not wrong to say ¿Se fueron a acostar?, we changed the sentence to ¿Se acostaron? as we hadn't taught this structure and it's not necessary since "acostarse" already means "to go to bed".
This change will be available on the updates page shortly. You can access the updates here: http://commons.fluenz.com/downloads/s...
If we can help further, please email us at: [email protected]
Cheers,
Fluenz User Support
Jun 26, 2014 - 08:00 PM
Hello MH - thank you very much for the follow-up and incorporating it into the updates. Thanks to everyone at Fluenz for your excellent product.