The Meaning of Sit

As a "trainer" I get very frustrated when people use the words good sit. Humans will never understand that dogs do not get the nuances of our verbal language.

Human: sit
dog: huh?
Human: siiit
dog: flowers!!!!!yahoo!!!I want to sniff those!!!!
human: SIT!
dog: oh yeah, I know that one! but on the ground! got it!
Human: good sit
dog: wait. . .my but is already on the ground. . .what do I do now. . .oh look...butterflies!!!!

When we humans use the word sit we are asking the dog to do a behavior -the word sit is a verb, meaning TO DO. Sit to us means butt on the ground. If you are a good trainer, then sit will also mean butt on the ground to your dog as well. And while your dog may be very smart, he will never really understand the true meaning of an adverb. Therefore, your dog will never understand good sit. Even though you added the adverb, your dog will only understand the action that the verb requires. So, saying good sit, is like repeating a command (which you should never do) after your dog already followed the command in the first place (super confusing)

All that to get to my issue of teaching Abby to sit from a down. Abby *vaguely* understands the verbal command sit. She understands it enough to know that you can't truly sit from a down position; because, for Abby, sit means put your butt on the ground. And, since her but is already on the ground in a down position, it is difficult to put it down again for a sit. But, I really need to teach Abby to sit from a down position. So I tried and tried. No real luck. (I know, and even I don't get it at times!) A friend suggested that I use a different command. And you know what? It worked. I chose up because I wanted her to move her chest up off the ground. It was easy for me to remember. And, it was a completely different command for a completely different behavior, so it was easy for her to understand. And while many trainers have great success at teaching their dogs the nuances of language and can conjugate the verb to sit every which way; I cant. I can hardly keep from tripping over my dogs when walking. There is no way that I can teach them language and behavior at the same time. I am not a good enough trainer - and neither are most of the dodo heads that I see saying good sit.