#dialects are weird
Like most of you, I spend a lot of time reading random stuff on the internet and I’ve noticed a really curious trend as of late. Somewhere along the line, people have started using “sat” instead of “sitting”.
Example: while sitting outside a noodle shop -> while sat outside a noodle shop
Example: He was sitting -> he was sat
This isn’t “proper” English and I was stumped as to where it was coming from because I never heard people say it out-loud. I was only finding it online and it was slowly driving me crazy.
A little research led me to discover that this is a regional thing in parts of the UK, which is kind of fascinating because they only do this for sat. No one says “he was run”, they say “he was running”.
Why is sat specially? Because dialects (regionally-based variations of a standard language) are weird.
Obviously the UK doesn’t have a monopoly on regional quirks. If you’re from the Midwestern regions of the USA, we often drop our helping verbs after the word “needs”.
Example: Needs to be washed -> needs washed
Example: My hair needs to be cut -> my hair needs cut
Unlike many other regional quirks where the dialectic strangeness is only found in the spoken word, deviations such as these can be dangerous. They’re not weird words, they’re weird grammar. When we have minor grammatical deviations in our dialect, we often don’t realize that we’re deviating from standard English.
That’s all well and good when we’re talking to friends or posting on Tumblr, but if you’re writing something in a more formal context, its easy for this regionalisms to slip in and leave someone with a poor opinion of your grammar. That’s especially true if your audience isn’t familiar with your dialect. So, be careful! I actually have a note on my computer to remind me about the helping verbs quirk because it’s the dialect that I grew up with and I often don’t notice it unless someone points it out.
If you know of other quirks that often slip into writing, I’d love to hear about them! When things become a part of your standard lexicon, it takes someone pointing it out for you to know that you’re writing with non-standard grammar.
