Hello
Guest

Sponsored Links


Topic: "sat there" - grammar  (Read 8291 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

  • *
  • Posts: 3358

  • Liked: 9
  • Joined: Mar 2011
  • Location: IN to Blackburn to IN to KY
Re: "sat there" - grammar
« Reply #90 on: October 09, 2012, 04:18:46 PM »
Yep, it is used as 'laid there'. I suppose I should have elaborated. It just 'feels' wrong when I hear it.
“It's practically impossible to look at a penguin and feel angry.” Joe Moore

“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
― Dr. Seuss


  • *
  • Posts: 3427

  • Liked: 3
  • Joined: Jan 2008
  • Location: Barnsley, UK
Re: "sat there" - grammar
« Reply #91 on: October 10, 2012, 11:55:47 AM »
But that isn't valid. Although I do know what you mean - some people may use that interpretation and, yes, judging works both ways.

However, I don't know that I've ever heard of anyone being passed over for a job for using correct grammar.

So why isn't it valid to assume someone is "stuck up" if they speak posh but it's ok to make judgements if they have an accent?
It's possible to speak "properly" without sounding posh.
"We don't want our chocolate to get cheesy!"


  • *
  • Posts: 24035

    • Snaps
  • Liked: 11
  • Joined: Jan 2005
  • Location: Cornwall
Re: "sat there" - grammar
« Reply #92 on: October 10, 2012, 11:58:56 AM »
So why isn't it valid to assume someone is "stuck up" if they speak posh but it's ok to make judgements if they have an accent?
It's possible to speak "properly" without sounding posh.

I never ever said I would judge anyone based on an accent. That's ridiculous! We all have accents of various sorts. But I do judge people if they use bad grammar. And the judgment I arrive at is that they have bad grammar. That's it. And it's perfectly logical. But to assume that just because someone has correct grammar that they're somehow stuck up is a bit of a stretch.
My Project 365 photo blog: Snaps!


  • *
  • Posts: 1410

    • Jennifer Knits
  • Liked: 1
  • Joined: Jul 2010
  • Location: Inverness
Re: "sat there" - grammar
« Reply #93 on: October 11, 2012, 02:37:10 PM »
I've been judged for using "proper"  grammar, which is to say that my spoken English more closely resembles written English than most people's. The people who are put off seem to object on the assumption that I am judging them harshly for not speaking the way I do.

I seek to be more descriptivist and less prescriptivist about language. Most of our rules about grammar were shoe-horned onto the language by a Latin professor which, as a friend of mine once eloquently said, is rather like "trying to put a Barbie Doll dress on a Cabbage Patch Kid".

The point of language is to communicate and things such as slang and informal usages of language, when standard for a given community, facilitate communication within that community. Formal language, up to a point, has the advantage of generally being understood by a wider audience and is thus generally considered to be "correct".  But most of my deeply held "this is correct, that is wrong" beliefs about language are unravelling here in the UK as all these silly Brits seem to think that the way they've been doing it for hundreds of years (usually slightly fewer hundreds than we Americans) is, in fact, the correct way and that my usage is the non-standard one.


Sponsored Links