"Were sat down talking to elders and children when they came under fire from an insurgent position"
What do you think - from an MoD press release..
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The full sentence -
"The patrol, which included snipers, were sat down talking to elders and children when they came under fire from an insurgent position."
Who sat them? Wrong in my book. Just "sitting" rather than "sat down" would be my edit. But I'm not a real editor.
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I'd have written it as "sitting down" as well.
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Yes. 'Were sat down' is in the same category as 'me and Jim went to the pub': fine in colloquial speech but not suitable in formal English.
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Or perhaps. more archaically, "were seated"?
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A regional usage, certainly familiar from my childhood in the West Riding.
Whether the BBC should still follow such strict rules as to affect this sort of quote is an open question.
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I was not aware that the BBC followed any rules! Think "Guys" to refer to guests on Breakfast News, "Gunna" "Top of the Hour" "Up Next" "Upcoming" "Spits and spots of rain" What is upcoming is my breakfast as I listen to this junk from an organisation that used to be the paradigm of spoken English! Rant over, going to go to shop to get my paper and fall over in the snow and break a leg!
Last edited by: Meldrew on Thu 2 Feb 12 at 07:49
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It's an important distinction, so why blur it?
If a child is sat in a corner it means he has been singled out for punishment.
If you are sat somewhere it means you have been told where to sit.
Sitting is a matter of your choice, sat is someone else's choice.
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Put simply, it is the incorrect tense of the verb "to sit".
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I wrote a post here the other day about it with some quotes and then decided it was too retentive to click the post button, so I'm glad it's not just me that spots it.
Mine were police quotes, and included the "they were sat on a bench" variants and my observation that stories about events in the past are now often rendered in a strange present/past tense muddle, such as "The driver has come up the road too fast and hit the kerb, and the car was well alight".
You get that a lot on tv history programmes, where I suppose to try and make it feel more relevant we get whole segments in a pseudo present tense: "It's May 1642 and Charles opens the letter. Two weeks later, he takes action..."
I appreciate that Zero et al will say it matters not, as what they are trying to say is perfectly clear, but to me that's like saying that a blurred and skewed photo of a mountain I took with my Instamatic is good enough, as you can see what it is, and Ansel Adams was wasting his time. There's room for both, but in some cases we should pick the most pleasing.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 2 Feb 12 at 08:32
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>> "The patrol, which included snipers, were ........
It should be "was" not "were". "The patrol" is singular even though it contains more than one person. Similar examples ~ the crowd was, the family was, the regiment was, etc.
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This web page says that the past progressive tense is "sitting down". tinyurl.com/6nuzwhe
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 2 Feb 12 at 08:58
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That's how I was taught snail.
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>> That's how I was taught snail.
>>
Weren't you also taught that names should begin with a capital letter?
:-D
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Bur "snail" isn't your name so RP is correct. :-)
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Might be it was written by someone whose first language was not English.
I studied English as a second language and even then I would have written as "were sitting down".
>> If a child is sat in a corner it means he has been singled out for punishment.
I didn't know that =:-o
>> If you are sat somewhere it means you have been told where to sit.
In that case I would have written "they were made to sit..."
>> Sitting is a matter of your choice, sat is someone else's choice.
Noted :-)
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>> If you are sat somewhere it means you have been told where to sit.
>In that case I would have written "they were made to sit..."
Slightly different emphasis. Though I'm not sure I like "the child was sat in the corner" for any purpose. When used as in OP, it is dialect, don't think it's written by a foreigner.
The child was seated in the corner means either "that's where he was sitting" or "that's where he was told to sit" or indeed "that's where he was plonked on a chair"
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...so RP is correct.
Or would've been if he'd put a comma between 'taught' and 'snail'.
}:---b
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Thu 2 Feb 12 at 10:29
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Unless he can talk snail of course.
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>> Unless he can talk snail of course.
Comma missing there, too. Tut, tut, GC.
:)
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I checked and double checked, and still got it wrong.
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From the Oxford dictionary
In sentences such as we were sat there for hours the use of the past participle sat with the verb ‘to be’ is informal and not part of standard English. Originally only in dialect, it is now common in British (though not US) English. Standard English uses the present participle sitting in similar contexts, as in we were sitting there for hours.
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I suppose we can thank Coronation Street for that. Another pet hate is the use of "of" instead of "have" - Often heard in Cororrs is "I could of" - I have a well educated friend who uses it - (he of the beige Skoda) - Errors/laziness id unforgivable from a Government department press release though
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Since this is being discussed, it occurs to me that the form 'were sat down' for 'were sitting down' is perhaps regional. Anyway I associate it with the North in general, and Yorkshire in particular.
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Starting a sentence with And was worth a thick ear when I was at school, although it's something I do frequently nowadays.
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>> Starting a sentence with And was worth a thick ear when I was at school,
>> although it's something I do frequently nowadays.
And so do I.
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"And so do I."
Often use in the Bible.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. "
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Generally means Yorkshire dialect to me as well.
But, 'were sat down' also implies they were sat by somebody else, and 'were sitting down' implies they did it voluntarily. But for the missing 'have' we could be looking at the past perfect tense.
Not that my standard of English is up to it!
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>> Since this is being discussed, it occurs to me that the form 'were sat down'
>> for 'were sitting down' is perhaps regional. Anyway I associate it with the North in
>> general, and Yorkshire in particular.
Yorkshire usage, yes. I probably use it sometimes and Mrs M certainly does, but I don't think she'd write it - not if she was doing a PR for the MoD, anyway.
"could of" is something I don't recall hearing at all until the last few years, and probably has no dialect basis, unless imported.
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Could of surely arose from "Could've", an abbreviated form of "could have" common in London speech.
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Exactly. It's a corruption. Or a natural, desirable, evolution of our wonderful language as Zero might say.
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I was going to throw into the mix the inevitable complaint about rising intonation at the end of sentences, and make up some piffle about Australian soap operas and their undue influence, but then I found the article about the High Rising Terminal on Wikipedia and decided I knew nothing about the subject after all, although I'm enjoying the new to me word "Sociolect".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
Still annoys me though. How lucky I am to have enough space in my life to get annoyed about all this stuff.
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The local papers amuse me with the number of Citreons in the used car ads.
Not forgetting the number of drivers reported as having breaked and even broke has crept in.
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A long standing friend of ours says "apparanantly"!
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>> Not forgetting the number of drivers reported as having breaked
Breaks and peddles are endemic in cycling forums!!
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Whether it's desirable or not language changes. The English of today is not the English of one hundred years ago let alone five hundred years ago.
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>> The English of today is not the English of one hundred years ago let alone five hundred years ago.
What couldst thou mean thereby, thou black-avised hippogriff?
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Hippogriff! Why thou beggarly reeling-ripe pumpion!
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English is odd in that its practitioners have always felt uneasy about the concept of "proper" English. I was talking to a German Swiss a few years ago and he said everyone in his country was in a sense bilingual in their own language. In everyday use between locals they used a local German dialect. But everyone could also speak proper German, and used it on formal occasions, job interviews, etc, or when just introduced to someone and not yet sure whether they wanted to slip into native or not. People would slide up and down the formality spectrum according to a subtle interpretation of circumstances and appropriatenes.
As GBS wrote, why can't an Englishman learn how to speak?
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>> The English of today is not the English
>> of one hundred years ago ..........
My parents were born over a hundred years ago, and neither of them spoke/wrote significantly differently from the way I do. They used a few quaint phrases which I don't, such as saying we were "as black as the Devil's nutting bag" if we came home dirty, but that's about all.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 2 Feb 12 at 14:25
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Written English has also changed much since I started earning a living in the 60s. I well remember the business letters that would start along the lines of 'We are in receipt of your communication of the 3rd ultimo..., instead of 'Thanks for your email received last month...'
Thank goodness.
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Thanks for your email received last month...'
Customer service was it?
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>> What do you think - from an MoD press release
A high standard of written English is not one of the most important requirements for employment with the MoD. The release was most likely penned in haste by someone in their late teens or early twenties with far more on their mind that whether to use the words "sat" or "sitting".
:)
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Sadly nor is fighting a war or buying stuff at a good price and getting it to work !
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When discussing language with Spanish people (yes I DID talk to some of them!) I explained that in Spanish,the pronunciation was easy, but the grammar was difficult, whereas in English the pronunciation was difficult, but the grammar easy. (Relatively!)
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This from the BBC News website;
" the wind-chill factor meant the real temperature was down to -52C, even though the air temperature was -35C. "
Ignorant.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate on Thu 2 Feb 12 at 22:03
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A Spill Chucker Just Four Yew.
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
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>> I am shore your pleased two no
Sadly, I know many people who write like that all the time :(
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Don't we all Dave :( absolutely no excuse for it though IMO.
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"Felt like -52c" if I understand the science!
www.springfrog.com/weather/wind-chill.htm
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You understand correctly of course - not like the muppet who wrote it.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate on Tue 7 Feb 12 at 14:24
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Went to a gastropub the other night - The White Eagle in Rhosolyn
www.white-eagle.co.uk/index.shtml
This is a very nice lace with real ale, good food and good service. Patronized by the RAF including HRH - it's a really nice place.
However - they have a newsletter which updates customers on current developments on this and another sister-establishment in another village.
There was an article from the Head Chef about food preparation and beer when he wrote a sentence along these lines....
"myself and Mrs **********" What is it with people with this recent misuse of the word "myself" ? - hate that as well.
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>> "myself and Mrs **********" What is it with people with this recent misuse of the
>> word "myself" ?
If he were to use the correct phrase "Mrs Chef and I" he would sound pretentious and snobby, certainly not the type of thing for an informal, chatty newsletter, or a local friendly pub.
> - hate that as well.
Why? how can you "hate" the perceived misuse of a word? really think about it, what possible reason could there be for "hatred" when there are so many more heinous things happening locally and globally to hate? In the scale of things, use of the word "myself" is pretty insignificant.
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The use of "I" or "me" when the sentence refers to more than one person is a topic in itself:
www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-grammar-using-I-and-me.html
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Doesn't mention the misuse of "myself" though but I see what you mean iffy. Yes Zero, one of the only things I feel strongly about these days to use "hate" as a verb is the misuse of myself. Can't believe that it's down to the dumbed down education system....er....myself.
Last edited by: R.P. on Sat 11 Feb 12 at 08:43
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>> You understand correctly of course - not like the muppet who wrote it.
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Muppet ~ springfrog ~ good pun!
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Misuse of English ? - Manatee
