What's the difference between "to lie in" and "to sleep in"?
And could you correct the following sentence please:
"I wanted to turn off my mobile telefone not to be called next morning, but I forgot to do that and my friend called me so early, that my plan to sleep/lie in failed"
Thanks in advance
In Britain 'to lie in' means deliberately to get up later than usual; e.g. 'I generally lie in at week-ends'.
'To sleep in' means the same thing as to 'oversleep' e.g. ' I overslept and was late for work.' or 'I slept in, and missed the train'.
In Norfolk dialect they speak of 'to lay late', meaning to oversleep. They say 'lay' in Norfolk when they mean 'lie'.
I wanted to turn off my mobile telefone so as not to be called next morning, but I forgot to do it and my friend called me so early, that my plan to sleep long failed.
Here in Ireland (and also in the UK), I would say that lie in is by far the more normal term, but sleep in could also be used. A lie in is intentional, or at least semi-intentional. This is one of the places where Google ngrams is unhelpful: it will include all references for lie in bed and sleep in a hotel and all sorts of similar constructs, not just lie in and sleep in as phrasal verbs.
The other variant is to sleep it out, which means oversleeping unintentionally. It’s possible that this is a phrase used only in Ireland.
