To ask if the word "sitting" has fallen out of use completely?

[LaPerduta]

See also "lying" and "standing".

I realise there are dialects and that this is Mumsnet, not an academic assignment, but I hardly ever see "sitting" being used when - dare I say it - it should be.

Do I need to move with the times?

We're still sitting here in Scotland

I always felt that "I was sat/stood there" had a slightly different, passive, possibly humorous tone (eg I was stood there like a lemon) than "I was standing/sitting there", which is neutral and standard English. So by losing the -ing, we reduce our options for expression. But maybe that's just me. Losing lying (eg on the bed) for laying is slightly different but also a pity.

Not as bad as 'led' as in ' I was led on my bed'. Its a local thing but it's vile.

It seems that "I was laying", "I was laid", "I was led" or even "I was lay" are all (at least cumulatively) more common than (the correct) "I was lying".

We all say sitting, DC are 18&21.

@EntwiferyI have not heard that.

I loathe "I am sat" and "I was sat" (plus obviously "he was sat", etc.) but I was loath to be overtly critical as that seems to invite a pile-on as some posters have dyslexia (which of course I understand) and other posters had to leave school at the age of eight to go and work in the cotton mills or up chimneys and so weren't fortunate enough to have had a good education.

I get that feeling too. I remember deliberately using "I was sat" to begin a story in an English exam when I was…12ish(?), to set a colloquial, humorous tone and help characterise the narrator, and luckily the teacher marking it saw what I was trying to do rather than marking me down

Yes. Deeply.

"Fred and I" used when it should be "Fred and me" is way, way worse.

Or ‘Myself and Fred’ Grrrrrrr!

I was sat, she was stood etc etc upset me more than is reasonable. Particularly when I hear it said on Radio 4 - is nowhere sacred and safe from bad grammar? I keep trying to convince myself that language changes and it's something I need to accept and relax about, but every time I hear it, it stops my brain in its tracks and it takes a second or two to move on. I really wish I could chill out about it - this reaction does no one any good at all.

I hate "lay-in".
As in "It's my turn for a lay-in"

I also hate "babies" for "baby's". As in "that's my babies dummy".

I also hate "myself" used wrongly by twats trying to sound posh.

"Please email Jill and myself".

Fred and I’s anniversary.

I kid you not!

I haven't had much in the way of education and when I first came across this way more than a decade ago I wondered if it was "correct". My investigation into it is be to think it was perhaps just an off shoot and so I never adopted it myself. However, I understand it, and so long as I understand something then it's what I class as "suitable communication", which is all that matters to me.

I'm afraid your mother was wrong. Mary was laying Jesus in the manger, not lying him in the manger (which doesn't make sense), so she laid him (as it happened in the past). Just the same as you would say, "She laid the table," not, "She lay the table." You can of course say, "She lays the table," for example, "She lays the table before breakfast every morning."

If the song were describing something happening in the present it should be, "She lays him in the manger" or "She is laying him in the manger."

I agree, but it's not as bad as "Fred and myself".

I have come across this misspelling occasionally as my email address contains the word 'woman', but I just put it down to some people being very bad indeed at spelling.

However are you saying that people actually use the word women (pronounced wimmin) for woman when speaking? I haven't come across that.

I use them all. But language evolves - there are no real rights or wrongs. We talk in the UK about the binmen coming to collect the rubbish. The Americans call it garbage. In strict terms they are correct - we used garbage but changed the word, and they didn't. Starving, as in hungry, didn't used to mean hungry - in middle English it meant dying, because having no food and dying were considered synonymous.

Purity of language is impossible, but I'd also call it undesirable. It was the thing that destroyed some of our traditional languages and dialects. If the Queen wants her English, she can keep it. Diversity of language, and growth of language, are wonderful things.

Ah, I see several people have already made this comment...

as laid is fine - from The Cambridge Dictionary She laid the baby on the bed

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/lay

Myself is used in hiberno english in certain circumstances. It's definitely not trying to be posh in those situations.

The reason I hate "Fred and I" used incorrectly is the same - it's twats trying to sound posh. Unfortunately, it seems to be most of the english speaking world other than my family and me (see, I used "me" correctly there) at this stage. I have it hammered home to my kids - if it's "me" without Fred, it's "me" with Fred. If it's "I" without Fred, it's "I" with Fred.

Although I actually think this has come about due to people using "Fred and me" incorrectly, being told it should be "Fred and I", but not knowing why, and then assuming that the word "and" requires "I", in much the same way an apostrophe indicates an s is following.

The nice thing about language is that it evolves.

As long as a person can be understood, it doesn't actually matter that much - if someone tells me "I was sat on my bed", I'm going to understand precisely where they were and in what position. Job done! 😊

(And pedants annoy me more than shifting language trends. Britain will not fall, the crops won't wither in the fields, people won't be left speaking tongues unintelligibly to one another if we start shifting "I am sitting" to "I'm sat".)

I don't massively get the problem with 'sat' either tbh, in spoken English.