Random entry

[pne]

Random memory: receiving my first letter from a French boy who would become my pen-friend. Part of his letter (in German) was "Meine Geschicklichkeit ist: [street + number, postal code, town]"; that is, in English, "My dexterity is: [street + number, postal code, town]".

While I knew what he meant, I wondered how he had come up with that word, but I had a suspicion. I looked up "Geschicklichkeit" in my German–French dictionary, and sure enough, it had "adresse" as one of the translations. I suppose he looked up the word in a F–G dictionary but didn't want to pick the cognate, so he went for the Germanic word—which, unfortunately, doesn't mean what he wanted :) "Adresse" is the only word I can think of in German that's used for "address" (place where something is).

Later on, I would write him letters in French and he would reply in German; we would then correct each other's letters and send them back with our next letter, as a way to practise.

Random fact: "Creo" in Spanish means both "I believe" and "I create". Fun when two verbs "interfere" in some of their forms. (It occasionally leads to confusion, as when many people use "lay" for "lie", or "laid" for "lay", in English, which still bugs me a little, and has made me unsure after hearing the form I consider wrong for so many years; "I lay on the bed all day yesterday" now seems strange to me, for example.)

Comments

He lied on the bed

[pne.livejournal.com]

lie lay laid
lay lay lain

Er, I hope you weren't serious with that, because that's not what I consider correct.

Re: He lied on the bed

[opal1159.livejournal.com]

Actually, I messed up. :x Should be:
present/infinitive, past, past particle
lie, lay, lain
lay, laid, laid

Today I lie on the bed, yesterday I lay on the bed, some other time I had lain on the bed; today I lay the book on the table, yesterday I (had) laid the book on the table.

Sorry for the confusion. O.o