Hi!
So I used caer instead of colgar because I remembered caer being used as "to suspend" somewhere. Does it sound odd/wrong to use it like that?
Thank you!
Edit after I found the answer: Caer is INTRANSITIVE, can't use it like that. I found examples of how it works when used as "hang", but your thoughts are always appreciated!
Hola Gabor
Yes, it is a different use. We generally use the verb caer as reflexive, not as a transitive verb, and it means "to fall". For example, you can say:
El niño se cayó por las escaleras.
The boy fell downstairs.
El jarrón se va a caer.
The vase is going to fall.
Colgar means to hang, not to fall. This is why we used it here with the direct object "macetas".
I hope this clarified it.
Saludos
Inma
Yes, that's right. That other meaning didn't cross my mind before. In that case the verb caer is used to express that something "is hanging off something" like in the example with the sheets.
With that shortened sentence, you need to verb as pronominal with se in order to mean that the sheets are falling off the bed: "Las sábanas se caen de la cama". However you can leave it as "Las sábanas caen de la cama" and this would still mean that the sheets are hanging off the bed; here you can visualise the bed with some sheets that are partly on the bed and partly hanging off the edge. I hope this makes sense.
Saludos
Inma
Hi!
Thank you for the reply. What confused me about this at first is that here (https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=caer), caer seems to also be used to mean hang, but only in a limited, figurative sense (or it's actually an artifact of translating it into English). Spanishdict also lists "to hang", be suspended as a possible use.
For example "Las sábanas caen de la cama por un lado más que por el otro" (The sheets hang over one side of the bed more than the other.) So here, fall is used figuratively as "hang" and translated as such. If you only said "Las sábanas caen de la cama", you would say the sheets fall off the bed, is that correct? It seems to me that translating it with "hang" is just an artifact of trying to fit the meaning into English terms.
(I should have actually done my homework first and put this in my original post, sorry about that)
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