Why some words have different present participles that completely alter the original word and have a dual meaning. For example to tell a lie becomes ‘ you are lying’ instead of lieing which is the same as ‘you are lying in bed’

Question

I never understood why some words you drop the y and add ing and some words you don’t

In: 1

Answer 1

English has no rules, only rules with exceptions. This avoids a stuffy language rules committee, which would be a zoo, but the result is more exceptions than almost all other languages. Sorry.

Answer 2

Most likely due to spelling rules which say that if a verb ends in a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), you drop the final vowel before adding the “-ing”. The problem here is that with a verb like “lie”, that means you end up with “liing”, which would not have a very clear pronunciation to it (it could be “lee-ing” or just “leeng” or… several different options perhaps). So to solve that, just replace the “i” with a “y” to make the same sound and preserve an easy marker for pronunciation.

Answer 3

It’s not something that follows grammatical rules. Languages all borrow words; if you watch the recent Ukrainian press releases, you’ll notice that there’s the occasional word that is exactly the same in English. They have an entirely different alphabet. Language isn’t law. It’s a living being.

Edit: I left out the specific point that most languages have unique cases for many words, borrowed or not. It’s just the way it is agreed to be correct by some organizations.

Edit edit: also, you literally described a rule with exception. the exact thing you disputed.