I've now been in England for one year. Somehow I survived. Perhaps made easier by smuggling brownie mix and Nestle chocolate chips across the border, and by having access to US TV-on-the-internet, I managed to make it through an entire year in the UK. There are many things I could write about living here, but on reflection, nothing made me want to write a blog post until considering the oft heard phrase "I was sat there."
I could, for example, talk about the food. I could wax poetic about a midnight kebab, discuss the subtle lack of any flavor in fish & chips, relate the militant loyalty the English show to their English curry, or express my deep wish that more steak dinners could be had in pie form. But no, nothing makes me realize I'm in a foreign country more than ordering food from a pub and being asked, "Where are you sat at?" I've been here long enough to be used to it, but the briefest pause must have prompted a follow-up: "Where are you sitting?" Ah, that's better.
I could talk about the other funny things they say. An elevator is a lift and an apartment is a flat, and all that... but you've most likely heard that before. I could mention some less well-known and certainly more important translations, like pants are trousers and undies are pants. Exits are ways out and "for here" is have in and "to go" is take away, etc.... all these appear on a running list I started long ago of the unique things you hear on this side of the pond, but top of the list is "I'm sat there."
I could discuss the finer points of how to describe someone you don't particularly like or aren't happy with. What is the distinction between wanker, tosser, and knob? What is the equivalent of asshole, douchebag, and jerk? What is the difference between an American twat (pronounced like swat) and an English twat (pronounced like bat)? (I apologize if you've sat through this blog post only to be offended by my language, but note that I didn't say "if you've been sat," which would be far more offensive to my ears.)
Or perhaps I could try to describe the taste of English "Real Ales," the coziness of an English pub, the smell... there's certainly a lot I could say about that. Pints are larger, and ales are indeed warm and flat to American tastes, but I haven't quite managed to figure out the precise way in which "this ale is quite nice" becomes "I would kill for a Sam Adams" in just a few months. From not knowing the difference between ale and lager, I now appreciate the bounty of American craft-brewed beers, without the hampering "purity standards" that make most European lagers taste exactly the same. But when experiencing these nuanced, beer-hazed musings on a typical Friday pub night, I might be jarred out of my reverie by someone complaining how they "were stood there for an hour" to the realization that no, I am not at home. The people here are different.
Every time I hear something like that, I can't help but wondering, "By whom?"
Look, I'm not a prescriptivist. I care about grammar because it's like the algebra of sentences, and algebra is fun, but I'm sure there's nothing grammatically incorrect with saying "I was sat there" instead of "I sat there" or "I was sitting there." (Yes that's right, algebra is fun!) To me, it seems like "I was sat" implies an unspecified subject - like, for example, "Grandpa sat me down to tell me how the world works." In this case Grandpa is the subject and "I" is the object, and "I was sat and told how the world works" is just refusing to acknowledge Grandpa, the subject. So when people here "were sat at a train station eating a vindaloo pasty," I know, deep in my heart, that "vindaloo pasty" should be the most English thing in that sentence, but I just can't get over the grammar.
So, I have been in England for a year. I've been to Stonehenge, Edinburgh, and London. I traipsed across the South Downs and had an English breakfast in an Oxford college. I was jammy to find a nice gaffe in under a fortnight, and have an app to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit. But you will never hear the phrase "and I'm sat there" cross my lips, (unless ironically), because I am an American.
Cheers, Ta, Thank you very much indeed!
