What is the meaning of "we lay down in grass" in the sentence, "Our front yard would be a lot nicer if we lay down in grass" ?
This sentence is in the examples in the Korean-naver dictionary. In the example sentence of this dictionary, this dictionary translates:
"Our front yard would be a lot nicer if we lay down in grass"
as
"Our front yard would be a lot nicer if we plant grass"
But Google translator translates "Our front yard would be a lot nicer if we lay down in grass" as "Our front yard would be a lot nicer if we lie on grass".
What does it mean?
Best Answer
If you want a lawn (a large, flat area of grass), there are two ways of doing it. You can sow grass seeds, or you can buy rolls of grass that is growing in a thin layer of soil (called turf) and then lay it in the same way as you would lay a carpet. This is what turf looks like:
This sentence is not correct. It could be made understandable by removing the in, but still not natural or grammatically correct. More natural sentences would be:
You could also use the words lay, grow or plant in relation to a lawn. The term lay down is not used about turf or lawns. This NGram shows that make a lawn is considerably more common than lay a lawn, and lay down a lawn hardly appears at all.
Note that, when we use would in a conditional sentence (one with an if), we normally backshift the tense of the verb in the if clause, so make->made, sow->sowed, lay->laid.
This is what the first sentence would be like if we made it unconditional: