Sitting, lying and standing

[niadainud]

What has happened to these words? Why does nearly everyone now write and/or say, "I am sat" / "I'm laying" / "I'm laid" / "He is lay" / "I was stood"?

Why can't people conjugate the verb "to lie"? (As in being in a horizontal position, not being untruthful.)

Does anyone else hate it?

Not as much as I hate replacing "from" with "off of"...
On balance, I don't think I pay much attention to whether people are sat or sitting as there are so many dumb Americanisms about which I am constantly fighting with my kid.

On a podcast recently, I heard them explain it by saying if you replace it with shat or shitting then does it make sense. Thought that was quite a good way of getting it right

The problem is people who speak and write in this way have no concept of conjugation, let alone being able to spell it. The advent of the internet really has served to highlight the madness of allowing children to get away with an abysmal grasp of English in the pursuit of "free expression".

The problem for pedants on fora like this is having the self-discipline to scroll past the howlers (e.g., "a women") without comment.

Oh "off of" is ghastly.

Hahaha! That's brilliant! 😂

I've noticed this for a long time. Always bugged me.

I live in Scotland now and people don't really say it, but notice it a lot down south.

It shouldn't really be considered pedantry to use such very basic, everyday verbs correctly. It's not as if it's the subjunctive or even who/whom or less/fewer.

I'm happy to be corrected, but as far as I can see the present participle in English always ends with "-ing", even for very irregular verbs, so why do people want to make an exception of these ones?

Although they do say, "I done" which is arguably just as bad!

Many haven't been taught properly.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/pedants_corner

The misuse of sitting/sat and standing/stood are my pet hate. It's gone so far now that lots of people don't realise they are getting them wrong.

Don't get me started. I'm an editorial professional and this is creeping more and more into books, not just spoken language.
TBF it is 'correct', or anyway usual, in quite a lot of dialects around the UK, so I'm sometimes happy to turn a blind eye if it's being used by a fictional character who is quite likely to genuinely speak that way.

Some of that usage is regional, though, isn’t it? (I’m not from the UK.)

I think I’m less bothered than ‘I was sat’ than ‘I was laid/laying on the bed’, which conjures up strange images of someone having sex with you or egg production.

And ‘I seen him’ makes me want to throw things.

This does my head in!

What history has shown us is that language and it's uses change with the times and that is perfectly normal. I am so unbothered by it. And to be honest it will be accepted as the norm in a decade or two. Just adapt or be phased out.

Probably because they are so tired they can't think/talk properly. Haha. they need a lie down. One thing I've noticed I'm doing recently is saying that rather than 'he has a cold', I'm saying 'he is having a cold'. Or instead of a piece of clothing has a hole in it, 'this is having a hole in in it". It makes me sound like my first language isn't English when I have a first in English lit, haha!
As long as they are understood but I know what you mean. I seem to warp my use of the language more when stressed.
'Arks' (you a question..) is my worst one but you don't hear that as much as you used to I don't think. Thank goodness!

'Arks you a question' is a feature of Black British English/Multicultural London English, I think. It does't bother me. Most of this stuff does't bother me in spoken language, but it does make me twitch to see it in books (again, unless it's deliberate and reflects the character).

@MarkWithaC As you say I wouldn't expect to see anything like that in a book unless it was dialogue conveying someone's character/background. It bothers me a tiny bit if a 'professional' says it, like a nurse or something, one company had it repeatedly on their automated greeting service. It seemed she was using the word on purpose to make a point! haha.
Yeah, I live in London and I've been hearing it a bit less over the last few years.
In my accent it sounded like I'm saying "arsed' which isn't great either.

I don't think it's a problem even if a professional uses it. It's just a spoken variant. I's perfectly possible to be both a professional and a user of MLE.

Language moves on.
You know this and you can't prevent it.

I would love to know what you are all talking about, I'm ADHD (no idea while I was at school) and I also went to the sort of school that didn't teach this (probably out of fashion) I absolutely love to hear 'correct' English and grammar but I can not replicate it, nor can I learn an instrument or a new language (despite working abroad for a while!)

So you can be as angry as you like about me and my use of language, I just have to muddle through. I managed to get a 1st class hons degree & a masters (in a subject I am good at) no problem so I'm lucky it's not the only way to judge people's intelligence or ability to communicate ideas

Someone on here wrote “ Led on the bed” - I was itching to correct it!

Ugh, my ex used to say led down 🤢

The English language is constantly changing and evolving. When did you last use forsooth, whence, hast and doth?

This isn’t a new thing - I think you’ve just started noticing it more.

In some (possibly most) cases it’s just a dialect thing, which is fine. Not everyone has to speak RP all the time.

Obviously some people are just getting it plain wrong, though, which is different.

Exactly. We all say things every day that would have been considered incorrect even a hundred years ago.