I was sat…

[TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross]

Just started a book on my Kindle - fortunately a free book - and the reporter was stood on the street corner; the protagonist was sat on her sofa…

One of my pet hates, so much so that I don’t know if I can finish the novel 😂

If it's normal speech for their region, there isn't an issue.

I done and I seen are normal speech for the region I'm from. My parents always corrected us as it's incorrect.

OP was talking about reading a novel. I meant that people from those areas likely don’t know it’s not standard English. If people want to write like that it’s their choice but it can alienate people who read it as a mistake. I don’t mean when it’s a narrator with a specific regional voice. Also, those same people might read other ways of speaking written in a novel and see those as mistakes. I see “I was sat” so much on MN but then those same people would hate “I have went…”, “He done it” etc.

When very young we would say 'she was sat sitting there', phew for maturity!

What’s the correct term?

This is such an important point. So many distinctions are just being lost because 'that's pedantry' or 'that's the vernacular '. Those of us who cherish the ability to communicate clearly are being deprived of that.

I can't help thinking that in these circumstances the proposed removal of jury trials for certain offences may be a good thing. I wouldn't want to be judged by people who genuinely don't appreciate that there's a difference between 'I was sitting ' and 'I was sat '. Not because I wouldn't trust their judgement, but because I wouldn't trust that we had a common understanding of the underlying facts.

Imagine it was just ‘this means so much…’.
Would you then say ‘to me’ or ‘to I’?
Obviously, ‘to me’.
So you should say here ‘this means so much to Catherine and me’.

Problem on this one is that a bizarre understanding has arisen that the use of ‘I’ is more educated, for want of a better term, than ‘me’.

A simple way to remember is to use the same pronoun as if the other person was not in the sentence. You wouldn't say "give that to I" so you shouldn't say "give that to Mary and I".

Aah…the late, great, Hylda Baker

I hated it for a while but now I find it charming!

😂

I hear this at school…. In the staffroom!!! 😳

It depends on the sentence and whether the two people are the subject or the object of the sentence. A woman who has never been a schoolteacher was taught, in the 1950s, "Take them apart, think how you say it for each one, then put them back together."

I am pleased to be here today. + Catherine is pleased to be here today. = Catherine and I are pleased to be here today. (Grammatically it would not be incorrect to say 'I and Catherine are pleased to be here today.' but it's clumsier to say it that way round.)

It's fairly simple when you understand it, but there are more complicated sentences when I sometimes think I'll come on here and ask for advice.

I have heard Catherine and William get it wrong and right at times. You will also hear TV and radio presenters getting it wrong often.

A retired schoolteacher _ very successful at teaching her own subject - said, "Him and her are going to Spain." Pull them apart, think how to say it for just one, then put them together again. What should she have said?

This is normal speech where I grew up. For me there is a difference in verbal aspect between "I was sat there" e.g. for three hours and "I was sitting there" e.g. when something happened.

If you don't have this distinction in your own version of English that's fine, but there's no need to criticise people who do!

It may be normal in some areas but it's still incorrect. Just as incorrect as saying I was ate or he was thought. That weird distinction you have made up doesn't make it any less wrong.

It's not incorrect in my variety of English though. It's grammatically correct for me and many other English speakers. For me and presumably the community I grew up in there is a functional difference between these two verbal constructions. I'm not sure why that's hard to understand or why you think it's made up.

You may consider it correct. So may those around you. That doesn't mean it is. It only means you live in an area/mix with people who don't care about/understand grammar.

You are misunderstanding or misrepresenting what grammar is though. For many people this is a perfectly grammatical construction. For you it isn't. That's fine, there are many ways to speak English. Interrogate what makes you think one group of speakers is right and the other is wrong.

There is a standard English grammar. You will admit that I was thought is incorrect I'm sure. I was sat is no different. The only difference is that it's a mistake made by a lot of people.

I could go around saying I was thought, I was ate etc and claim that it's perfectly acceptable as it's MY grammar - but most people would beg to differ.

It's not a mistake though, it's just different. Yes, at various points people decided to write down how their community spoke English and call it "standard". There's nothing objectively better about those types of English.

Your example is not really comparable. A comparable and quite interesting example might be African American "I be sitting". African American English is often said to have more ways to distinguish verbal aspect than "standard" English, one of which is this construction with "be" that indicates a habitual action. Speakers often get told they're wrong or making mistakes when they use these constructions. Obviously there are more systematic and complex differences than a few northerners saying "I was sat/stood". But it's similar in that something grammatically correct and highly productive in one community, is not accepted by another community.

Another from the NW? One of our claims to fame was that we bought our chips from Hylda Baker's sister's chippy!

The bottom line for me is that when a novel is written in Standard English, not dialect, I expect the grammatical constructions to conform to that. In that context, “I was sat” is incorrect, it irritated me intensely, and was enough to put me off reading any further. If that makes me a bad person, I can live with that!

What's odd about this error is that it's one of the most regular examples of English verb conjunctions. Every verb - including the really irregular ones like "to be" and "to go" use the "-ing" form (I think it's the present participle) after the auxiliary in this construction.

Did it say on the cover that it was written in the particular dialect you would call standard English then? Or do you check the geographic or ethnic origin of the author first before you start reading, in case there might be something you don't like

At least it’s not ‘myself and my wife’ which was what King Charles said in his first Christmas message. 🙄