Set du dee doon!

In Shaetlan some imperatives are expressed reflexively:

– Come du dee! ('Come!', lit. 'Come yourself')

– Set du dee doon! ('Sit down!' lit. 'Set yourself down')

This is usually done with verbs that involve a change of location somehow, like come, go, haste, sit down, etc. Also, the StE equivalents tend to be the kind that do not take an object (in "I am coming" or "I am sitting down" there is only the action and the doer, but no object; so-called intransitive verbs), but in Shaetlan they do take an object, namely the self. This is similar to certain kinds of verbs in the Scandinavian languages, which are also reflexive, like the posture verbs att sätta/ställa/lägga sig 'to sit down/stand up/lie down' (lit. "to sit oneself down/stand oneself up/lie oneself down). The Shaetlan way of forming commands for these kinds of verbs therefore look quite different from the StE way. To "correct" these kinds of imperatives would be misguided: they are perfectly correct and well formed imperatives in the Shaetlan grammar.

PS:

The expression

– Come du (dee) wis! ('Let's go!', lit. 'Come you (yourself) ourselves!')

includes the speaker in the command and is technically not an imperative but a so-called hortative. Because the speaker is included in the command the reflexive pronoun is wis 'us; ourselves'. The Shaetlan reflexive pronouns have a long form (deesel/wirsels, etc) and a short form (dee/wis, etc). But more about that in a separate post! 🤓