How to explain the sentence "I was sat next to them"? [duplicate]
Forms like "I am sat here" and "they were stood there" are common in certain dialects of English (such as Yorkshire, where I live), but are not regarded as standard English, which prefers "I am sitting here" and "they were standing there".
They are examples of stative verbs, which in many languages have a different grammar from other verbs, but exactly how the form arises I don't know. [Edit: also, they don't pattern with the class of verbs usually called "stative" in English, in that they do have continuous forms: "I am sitting" etc.]
Some notes on all this from the OED...
The transitive verb to seat meaning “to cause to sit down” is first cited in 1623’s Henry VIII. Seated meaning “sitting down” is an adjective derived from the transitive verb to seat, and whose earliest citation in English is from Scott in 1817.
The simple past and the past participle of the much older verb to sit are both simply sat, and nothing more. Its reflexive and transitive senses, respectively meaning “to seat oneself” and “to cause someone to be seated”, date from time immemorial. Some relevant citations for the “I am sat” sort of sense include:
- The Middle English work Cursor Mundi has “þe folk ware satte” [“the folk were sat”].
- A 1711 citation that includes “The Court was sat”.
- An 1803 citation of “Where‥Hermon and his friend were sate.”
It is interesting to note that the older sate spelling includes several 19th citations, including Thackeray’s Vanity Fair of 1848.
I can in summary find no hint of condemnation in the OED for the use “I am sat”. However, these entries have not been updated since the Second Edition of 1989, and it is possible that more recent hypothetical opprobrium for such things has not yet found its way into being reflected there.