"American publications re-acquire a taste for 'gotten'." ~ "American publications re-acquire a taste forgotten." I loved this little double entendre. Don't know if it was truly intended or not but it was musical. :)
When I read it to camera, I realised it was ambiguous, and was about to re-word it to avoid the ambiguity, but then decided the ambiguity was nice enough to keep it that way.
I'm Brazilian. During the pandemic, the media talked about how concerned many Portuguese parents were because their kids were talking like Brazilians due to the Brazilian channels on YT they were being exposed to while away from school.
I heard one of the most popular Brazilian TH-cam channels among Portuguese children is a guy who rode on the coattails of his brother's viral rant about what he didn't like about Twilight. Since the author of Twilight has cited the band My Chemical Romance as one of her many inspirations for the series, and since MCR was founded because one of the Way brothers (I can never remember whether it was Gerard or Mikey) wanted to do something "impactful" after 9/11, this led to memes about 9/11 creating a domino effect that led to linguistic shift in Portugal. 😂
@@nickpeitchev7763 I'm British/Spanish living in Portugal. It was a challenge to learn Portuguese but when a Brazillian speaks to me it's like another language. The some of the letter pronounciations don't follow any other European language rules. e.g. R=H, D=J, TE=CH.
@@nathanielescudero5379 Brazil tends to have multiple pronunciations of the same letter depending on dialect. So between Brazil and Portugal, there's radically different ways of pronouncing Portuguese.
I'm from California. I feel a distinct difference between "I just ate" versus "I ate already" versus "I've already eaten" where each seems to indicate a greater range of time in the past. "I just ate" refers to the last few minutes, no more than half an hour or so. "I ate already" is like saying "I'm not hungry, because I ate something within the last couple of hours." And "I've already eaten, " which I don't hear very often, carries a connotation of "no thank you, I ate at some point earlier today and don't require anymore to eat at this time." At least for me. I could even go a step further: "I, like, just ate," (which I think sounds very California) to me implies not only having eaten within the last few minutes, but also having eaten just before or on the way to meeting someone (who then offers you food).
I just don’t think the distinguishing matters much. The only reason to offer any form of ‘recently eaten’ in conversation is usually to politely discourage the offer of food or explain why one might not be indulging in food with others.
Yes, for me, adding “like” into our speech just makes it choppy, and unclean (sort of improper, i guess). I feel as if people will just be saying “like” at each other all the time if it keeps trending 😅. Either way i find it irritating, but that habit/tendency is definitely very distinctive for a Californian lol
I'm Australian. In 1975 my teacher chastised me for using "gotten" in my essays. Then she went on to explain how ambiguous the word "got" was and requested that I never use it again, but instead substitute more descriptive and unambiguous words.
That basically is "I have a personal distaste for 'got' but I haven't gotten any better words yet, if only another could procure a secure gain with that sort of word, if only one could acquire a developed word to receive or convey what to utilize when to contrive and persuade a different delivery. Yet your teacher doesn't understand most words so it seems like, I have a personal distaste for 'got' but I haven't got any better words yet, if only another could get a get got with that sort of word, if only one could get a got word to get or get what to get when to get and get a different get.
When I was in at school, nearly 70 years ago, I was advised by my English teacher that the use of the word “got“ was “inelegant“ and I always strive to avoid its use. For example, I would never write “a TH-camr has got 1 million followers“ but, rather, “a TH-camr has 1 million followers“. I must admit that I might use “got“ in speech.
43 years old, born and raised in England and I've just searched for the world 'gotten' in my email history and there it was, lots and lots of examples of it. To be honest I had literally no idea that it was an Americanism.
I am an American living in the US and have noticed a similar problem. I love to read and mostly use a Kindle. I have a particular fondness for English writers and novels. Often their words are re-spelled into the US form. Or the word will be changed entirely to a more US acceptable one. For example: favourite to favorite or rubbish bin to trash can. I find that part of the charm of reading books from English authors is the difference in words and spelling. I realize that in printed books this practice has gone on for some time, but I feel that electronic reading devices should reflect the language and spelling that the author originally wrote.
If I were a writer published on Kindle I'd be furious at this practice. Same if I were a reader on Kindle. It's not a different language, they don't need to "translate" things.
I'm American and studied abroad in London for a term. I remember one of my professors marking some of my grammar wrong on papers and I had to keep telling her that it was considered correct in American English. It never affected my scores dramatically so I didn't stress about it but was confused the first few times she did it. Also had an English exchange student while in high school and she had the problem of our teachers marking her wrong for spelling certain words with an extra u, like colour. She had to do the same thing and explain it's just a variation and correct in her country. Even here on TH-cam in this very comment it's telling me "colour" is spelled wrong.
I have had an American professor in New Zealand question why us Kiwis use spelt instead of spelled. It’s very normal here - is it an Americanisation or the opposite? I never even thought of it till she raised it.
5:39 Idk about that. I’m born and raised in NJ, and I would say “i got an email from a friend” to mean “i received an email from a friend.” To me, “gotten” usually means “has,” or “has become,” as well as “received,” but “got” can also mean received in certain applications where “gotten” just doesn’t sound right. Idk why, but “got” is both present tense for “have” and past tense for “received.”
Gotten is also just horrible, and shouldn't be used by anyone of any nationality. It is ugly and unnecessary and, for that reason Brits stopped using using it about 500 years ago. A few 'misbegotten' people abroad haven't quite caught up yet. Extra 'u's in spellings such as 'colour' are ok, as they are virtually inaudible, and also explicable as a variant transition from other languages : eg 'couleur' /colour /color etc
I'd love to know what you think about Australian english. You often compare and contrast features of British and American english, and Australia has been heavily influenced by both countries. It seems that we've picked a little from column A and a little from column B, and invented a few of our own features. They say a fish can't taste it's own water, so I'm always curious when others comment on our way of speaking. It'd be great to hear your expert opinion if you ever have the time/inspiration to make a video about it.
One difference, as an American from the Great Lakes region, is the idiom "a fish can't taste its own water." I've NEVER heard that saying before, but I love it!
If you're interested in language and want to regularly hear Australian and American English contrasted, I highly recommend the podcast Because Language! Two of the three hosts are an Australian and an American living in Australia.
I'm a Brit who has spent a lot of time in Southern Africa and a fair bit of time in North America. To my ear Ozzy English is far closer to British English than any other, even that of New Zealand. (I am writing in terms of grammar and vocabulary)
canadian english is a mix of us and uk english too, taking some words like "curb" and "fries" from us (uk: kerb, chips) and "colour" and "litre" (us: color, liter) from uk and the term "washroom" (outside canada: bathroom, restroom) by itself, then there are words like vAYse/vAHse, where it can vary
I was surprised you didn't mention "ill gotten gains", which has been an idiomatic exception to the rule in the U.K.. Love your work and subtle humour. You deserve a million subs!
I'm a Canadian. A bit closer to American than British I've got $2000 is about my net worth. I've gotten $2000 is about the revenue of a recent transaction. "I've done it" is more final and important than "I did it" and I feel like this holds in general.
(American here.) I agree with your analysis of the first pair, but for "I've done it" vs "I did it," the former has more of a sense of accomplishment, whereas the latter feels more like simply stating that a task is complete. "I've done it! I ran a whole marathon!" "I did it, I took the trash out."
Agree on got/gotten, but I think the meaning of have done/did is better communicated orally with context, and the emphasis on accomplishment is lost when it's only in writing. For example, when Joe Biden (had?) won the US presidential election, Kamala Harris made the famous call when to let him know "We did it, Joe." Clearly it was a big moment (and ripe for memes lol).
As a non-native speaker of English this video makes me wonder about the origins of my English grammar. In school we were taught British English, but as I've spent so much time online, by now much of it is likely to be American English 🤔
I find that it is unusual to hear none native English speakers speaking English. Usually they are taught American. For a long time Chinese were taught English rather than American, but I suspect that this is no longer the case. Ditto India.
When I lived in Germany for couple years I noticed a lot of the germans i made friends with spoke english with a british accent. They had a german britsh accent it was very surprising and amusing to me.
Hey professor! Same thing happening between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, mainly because of internet (streaming services, youtube, tiktok etc). Portuguese parents "worry" their kids are catching BR accent.
Someone saying "você" Portuguese: 😱😡😭💀💀 Brazilian: 😊😇😄😃 However, when you say the final s and say vocêS instead of você Portuguese suddenly: 😊😇😄😃 Seriously. It's ridiculous
I listen to Brazilian and Cape Verdean music (and some Portugal and Angolan) and love different features from both versions of Portuguese. Brazilian really enunciates vowels and sounds good while singing, and Cape Verdean has a familiar sound to me as a Spanish speaker (except when they use Crioulo) and speakers from Cabo Verde sound even clearer to me then Portuguese from Portugal lol. 😊
As a South American I find this good, I hope Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese becomes more used than it's European Counterpart, it's good revenge for the colonization they did to our natives hahaha
@@HereGoesKevinIt's difficult to happen in Spanidh because there isn't a single Latin American accent to begin with. There are many clearly different accents to begin with. And there isn't a single media power in the Spanish speaking world like there is in the English-world with the US.
@Música______________ Eh, I think the Mexican accent, or should I say lack of it, it's easier to understand. But at the end of the day, it all depends on your preference/background.
As an American who is perhaps slightly younger than you, even I have noticed the speech patterns of younger Brits changing, but it's always fascinating to hear about it with more rigor than i generally apply. Your videos are both entertaining and informative - thanks!
I was in a group of eight people that would play a game twice a week for two hours and use voice chat. One of our number was eighteen years old and I had no idea she was British until the time zone difference got brought up (the rest of us are in the US). Even when I try I can barely detect her accent and she was raised 100% in England.
Yes, I just made a separate comment about this. My best friend is British and she has a very distinctive British accent but will use a lot of American English words and phrases and some she’ll even pronounce in the American way (ex. “schedule”)
I saw a movie a few years ago set in Glasgow. I was amazed that the swear words used were totally North American. Did we borrow from the Scots or did they borrow from us?
4:47 - Interesting point about the ambiguity of "has got". I was thinking about this the other day when I saw an ad for "Britain's got talent". It quite clearly means "Britain has talent" but the use of the present perfect (to have + participle) suggests an action started in the past.
54 year-old Englishman here, born, raised, and still living in Hertfordshire. I'm very fond of gotten, though it was certainly never part of my language when I was younger. As best I recall it was dismissed as either archaic or American, and not - or no longer - a feature of British English. But some time in, I think, my thirties I realised (or read) that even us British English speakers instinctively understand and use the difference between "forgot" and "forgotten", and the distinction between got and gotten is EXACTLY THE SAME. Made sense to me and I've used it ever since.
According to this video (4:36 onwards), the distinction in American English between "got" and "gotten" is not the same as the difference between "forgot" and "forgotten", because "has gotten" and "has got" both exist in American English but mean different things. So it is not just a case of one being the simple past tense and the other being the past participle, as is the case with "forgot" and "forgotten".
@@joe5923 It's not "irrelevant". The original comment said that the difference between "forgot" and "forgotten" and the distinction between "got" and "gotten" is "EXACTLY THE SAME". They even capitalised the words. The words "exactly the same" mean that there are no differences. The existence of a difference in usage proves that they are not exactly the same.
Since the US and UK have such a strong relationship, and all languages naturally evolve continuously, it’s only natural that our linguistics are converging based on our significant interactions.
I agree, and in my opinion, this is a good thing. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in the US. Even as a teenager, I was already reading a fair amount of British literature, and of course many of my favorite rock bands were British, though their singing style often sounded more American. But I remember that around 2000 or so, the availability of British media in the US really began to explode -- first with the availability of British newspaper articles online, and then a bit later with widespread availability of British TV shows and British TH-cam channels. And I'm sure that people in Britain are getting a steady diet of American TV, movies, and other media. While the quirks that make our versions of English distinct are interesting, and will probably never go away completely, I think it's better for people on both sides if our versions of English grow together than if they diverge and become more and more different over time.
@@Paul71H - I likewise had a mix of books published in the U.S. and elsewhere during my childhood. In fact, a few years ago I looked up the first book I read and realized that I must have gotten an advanced readers' copy or something because it turns out it was by a British author and I read it at least two years before its first publishing date.
I don’t think they’re converging, because that would imply it is happening in both directions. The internet is highly america-centric which unfortunately has given the USA an absurdly disproportionate influence over almost everywhere else. And not just when it comes to language.
@@AndersWatches I would suggest that it’s not equally reciprocal because the US has over 300 million people while the UK only has about 70 million people. The people determine word use so having more people speaking the language is naturally going to have an impact.
It's especially interesting for me to think about how I speak, where different words I use come from, since I've grown up in the internet age in multiple English-speaking countries with different accents and grammar (Australia, Wales - knowing a lot of English people, the United Arab Emirates, with people speaking English from a vast array of different places, and having parents from New Zealand), and also growing up with a lot of influence from the internet with American words, spelling, grammar. A lot of the time I subconsciously switch between different ways of saying things, with different words, different pronunciations, different grammar. It's never just like one place in particular, it's always a combination.
I am an American translator who has been living in Italy for 35 years; when I first got here I came to understand that British English was preferred, and I did my best to adjust - this for someone who had never heard the word "lorry." Well, I adjusted, and in recent years I have begun to notice the phenomena you discuss here. It feels like all my work was for naught.
@MediocreMan If he has children in Italy they wouldn't be American, but if he was born in the US no matter how long he is away, he's still American since you don't really get rid of your roots Its the reason why many immigrants we get can be living here for their entire lives and can never truly adjust, some things just don't go away
I found this fascinating. As an American I had no idea "gotten" was an Americanism, having of course grown up with it. Though given the relative population sizes I would suppose there is now more influence of American English on British English than vice versa, there are some instances of British English influencing American. I was a psychology professor at a small university in Nebraska until retiring two years ago, and I often had my students take a personality test devised in England by British psychologist Hans Eysenck. One of the questions on it was "As a child, were you ever cheeky to your parents?". I always had to explain what "cheeky" meant to my students in Nebraska. But for at least a decade I have heard some American newscasters on the network MSNBC use the word "cheeky" without seeming to realize that they have adopted a Britishism that many Americans wouldn't be familar with. For an example that might be a bit more related to grammar, within the last year I have heard a couple of Americans say someone was "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital", which has been the normal American way to say someone is a hospitalized patient. It's too soon to tell if that's really going to catch on over hear, but "in hospital" still sounds weird to me as a 71 year old American. (Of course, "graduated college", which all younger Americans now seem to use. still sounds wrong to me. when I always say "graduated from college", but I really don't know which of those forms is more used in the UK.)
The one Britishism that seems to me to have caught on the most in the USA is "arse" instead of "ass". When I started seeing it online, I thought it was only because of people using it as a joke about how one character in the movie "Braveheart" said one line... but then I still kept seeing more & more of it even years after "Braveheart" wasn't on people's minds anymore. (The loss of R between a vowel and an S was a rural American shift from I think about a hundred years ago which also includes horse→hoss, burst→bust, and curse→cuss. But the others mostly faded away even in the USA because urban people were still using the older versions with R. "Ass" just took over because of lack of competition because urban people had stopped using any version of it at all by then.)
My American classmate's posh mother used "was graduated from...". I guess this implies that it is the university which graduates the students, rather than the students who graduate themselves.
@@allendracabal0819 Well of course it's the institution of learning that graduates the students. At the university I was a professor at, and I assume most American universities, the entire faculty votes to approve the list of graduating students twice a year. Remember degrees are GRANTED by the institution. You don't grant them to yourself.
I’m not sure “arse” is actually commonly used anywhere in the US, but “bum” has suddenly taken off in the las 15 years or so. I think it’s because others cutesy euphemisms for ass like “patootie” and “fanny” have been mostly abandoned and sound ridiculously outdated and uptight to most people. God only knows why most Americans’ opinion on these words changed, but I agree that to my slightly younger ears those older euphemisms sound like something only an elderly school principal should be saying.
When I hear "in hospital" or "graduated college," I think of them as Canadianisms. Of course, even if that is the case, the Canadians got them from British English.
My parents, both French, met in Canada. As a child, in France, I remember how strange it felt to realise that some of the words I used every day were in fact not « French from France », and definitely not understood by the other kids in the village - my parents had simply taken them home from Quebec after all the years they’d lived there. If you hear it every day in a familiar context, a phrase is just normal to you, it’s yours.
Ooooh love things like this (stayed in Montreal for 6 months a few years back because I didn't want to do Erasmus in boring old France haha). Could you give us some examples, please?
I used to go grape picking every year back in the 1970s, and one time a bunch of Québécoise were at the same vineyard. French friends said they spoke in a really 'old-fashioned' way - like the French equivalent of 'Shakespearian'. They liked it!
@@altralinguamusica Off the top of my head some examples are bouffe instead of nourriture, bienvenue instead of de rien, char instead od voiture, and of course all the various sacres. :)
One example that exists in America is the adoption of “no worries”. I’m 37 and I in fact say it all the time, but I distinctly remember as a child that “no worries” was something only Australians and New Zealanders said on TV and in movies. I think if you told me we were going to adopt a phrase like “no worries” around the time The Rescuers Down Under came out, I would have laughed.
@Atheos B. Sapien You’re definitely right about it being introduced through that movie, maybe even before that. But what I mean is in the early ‘90s it was still a very strange thing to hear an American say no worries, and if they did say it they would feign the Aussie accent along with it, the same as someone pretending to be posh British by saying “chip chip cheerio”. Now I feel like people, including myself, say it all the time. And I’m struck by being able to see that change at the same time as I participate in it, because often enough I think language change is attributed only to the very young, who in turn don’t always even realize they’re changing the language since they have so little experience with it.
One thing Americans say all the time now, but would never have even thought of saying 40 years ago, is “go missing.” I can remember encountering that in British writing for the first time and thinking it was so quirky and weird, because you don’t just “go missing” the way you “go bowling” or something. Anyway, it’s everywhere now, and I’m not sure what spread it to these shores.
@@Fool3SufferingFools so what would you have said instead of go missing? For example, "it was around a week later when his family and friends realized he had gone missing." I can see saying "it was around... friendss realized he was missing." But what about it I just said "he went missing two years ago." Would you use the word missing or just say disappeared or some other word entirely?
Bravo Dr Lindsey! An excellent video. I seem to remember an anecdote somewhere which illustrated the past perfect/simple past nuance very well. An American was enjoying a late lie-in one morning in bed with his British wife when they both heard a noise downstairs and footsteps. A few moments later their son appeared, with the morning newspaper. They both spoke simultaneously: ‘Ah, you brought the newspaper’ said the American, thinking back to the moment when they heard the noise and footsteps. ‘Ah, you’ve brought the newspaper’ said the wife, as the son handed it to her.
I like these videos because the feeling I get from these, is that there isn't necessarily a right or wrong to one's grammar, or the changing of it. It just is, and as long as people can be understood and communicate with each other, language is doing its job.
@@Radditz770 I'm glad you took it in good part. I suppose I proved your point, in that, even though you wrote "it's" instead of "its", I still understood you. However, I can't bring myself to take such a utilitarian approach to language: I believe in accuracy for its (not "it's"!) own sake.
@@jackputnam4273 Yeah that makes sense ^^ The reason why it doesn't stick for me, is probably because I'm not natively english, and in so many other cases, apostrophe is used for possession. For example "The dog is over there, its tail is wagging" versus "The dog is over there, the dog's tail is wagging." I assume it is a matter of pronoun (he she it) versus definite articles (the dog) but my brain has a hard time keeping track of it in typing sometimes, haha. Hopefully it will stick eventually!
In my (Southern United States) grammar, I more closely associate "have" with the *historic* past, in a complete inversion of the British standard. For example, "I have noticed that before" feels like I'm asserting I noticed something months or years ago, while "I noticed that before" feels like I noticed something an hour ago. I suppose I see it as more or less equivalent with the past perfect/pluperfect tense ("I had noticed that before.") In fact, I seem to remember being taught this use of "have" in school, and I might've gotten (see what I did there?) some points taken off of a paper or two for using "have" too often to refer to present-relevant events.
@@mep6302 Hm, I suppose you're right. "Had" would fit for both of those ("I hadn't gone there yesterday"/"I had eaten in this restaurant two years ago") but "have" wouldn't. I was mistaken then.
@@davideldred.campingwilder6481 I could say "I have eaten in this restaurant for two years". Your example "I had eaten..." is wrong. "I did not go there yesterday" is correct.
I'm not American myself, but I understand that's a common expression in the US too. Some idioms tend to get "locked in" to their forms and resist language changes. Consider these: A *sunken* ship can't be recovered, so you may write it off as a *sunk* cost. All those *spilled* tears, crying over *spilt* milk. Go off the *beaten* track, it's a strategy that can't be *beat.*
Unused words can often survive through idioms. The "deserts" in "just deserts" means "that which is deserved", a meaning that basically doesn't exist anymore in modern English. Apparently they're called fossil words. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word
@@aez1814 Sunken is really only used in an adjectival sense. Similarly, drunk and drunken, proved and proven, struck and stricken. There's a trend to truncate the older class of strong verb participles ending in -en when not used adjectivally.
I'm from Poland and at school we learn British English. I feel really annoyed by it because I can get a worse grade just because of using simple past instead of present perfect. I don't get it. It should be more relevant whether you use one form in your entire text rather than which you choose.
Same here in my country. I was always reprimanded because my English isn't British enough and got lower grades because of it (it's rather American + my accent)
my favourite example is the spread of the mandative subjunctive present across the atlantic, e.g. “she asked that he close the door”. an entire mood on the brink of death was miraculously revived in america and is is now gaining prominence in the uk again.
@@GameFreak7744 It's a construction found mainly in formal contexts (speech by a politician, an academic discussing a topic, etc.). The ''subjunctive'' is a verb mood that conveys a purpose or desire and is typically used after verbs like ''to ask'', ''to demand'' ''to insist'' etc. In English the subjunctive is only really visible in the third person because that's the only person that gets any inflection at all (verb + s). Example: he instead she wear her favorite gown...
I'm Scottish and gotten has always been used where I live, and I was well into my forties before I discovered that people down south don't use it (this has happened with a few other things and words too, such as Hallowe'en, pled guilty etc.).
Sorry for the crude use of 'British'. Sometimes I try to be more precise, but often I admittedly just hide behind the convention of what dictionaries mean by 'British English'. To be honest, I simply don't know all about the regional and social distribution of 'gotten' in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere, I had a deadline to meet, and the video was already quite long...
One of the oldest widely-recognized YT memes is "I can't believe you've done this". As someone who generally dislikes slapstick humour and people getting hurt, I wondered why I and so many others found the clip hilarious. I think it's the Perfect form phrasing - it sounds unusual. The action was unpleasant, but immaterial, while such a phrase would be used following one of enormity, the underlying grammatical implication being that the present is now in a significantly different state due to that action. However, if I understand correctly, this is actually normal use in Australia, where these forms are used differently from both the UK and US. Edit: turns out the chap in question actually isn't Australian, but British.
From the beginning it was always amusing to me the part of speech he chose. Without that phrasing, I don't think the clip is nearly as amusing. In America we would have said "I can't believe you did that!". To use "have done this" is amusing because of the understanding that it is still presently relevant. And to my ears, it was so precise as if the speaker had taken the time to gather their thoughts despite having just been slapped. I'm sure it was just the common phrasing for him, but funny to me nonetheless.
I think for some reason us Aussies just tend to use the perfect form phrasing with the word 'this'. 'I've eaten this already.' 'I ate that already.' These seem intuitive and identical in grammatical meaning to me.
That last point you made about Cornflakes was exactly what I experienced growing up in Ireland. I thought they were Irish because we have so many farms around where I lived, and many wheat fields, so I was surprised to learn their actual origin. It is an excellent point in supporting that language simply without the need for anyone to consciously make modifications. Fascinating.
There are so many brands and items that I thought were only in Australia because they seemed niche and I never really saw them in movies or on the internet. I thought Specsavers was Aussie and I literally stopped in the street when I saw it after moving to the UK.
You're my favorite linguist and this is why. Unlike many, you don't dictate what should be but record and analyze what is. I just had a debate on a different channel where the host said most people mispronounce certain words. I argued no, if most people "mispronounce" them then the pronunciation has shifted. She then argued look at the spelling, to which I replied, "Spelling in English is a casual suggestion." Oodles of words have shifted from their spelling over time. You accept those and only resist this because it's actively happening and you're aware of it.
That's what makes a linguist in the first place anyway, first thing you learn in linguistics is that you should be a descriptivist not a prescriptivist as a linguist lol
For me personally "I've just eaten breakfast" means I ate breakfast recently, meanwhile "I just ate breakfast" means I ate only breakfast and nothing else.
Funnily enough, the same conflict between "present-relevant" and "historic" past forms happens in Spanish as well. In countries like Argentina, they tend to overuse the "historic" form; e.g. " *Comí* dos veces hoy" ("I _ate_ twice today"; and today isn't finished yet, where the form " *He comido* would have been more suitable.) Quite the contrary occurs in Spain, where they tend to exploit the "present-relevant" form for events long past in time; e.g. "Mi difunto padre *ha estado* aquí muchas veces" ("My late father _has been_ here many times"; where the old man is sadly no longer with us, rather obviously 😄.) Thank you Dr Lindsey. Your videos are solid gold for us foreign English learners. 👍👍
Even as an American, while I would say “I just ate not too long ago” or “I already ate twice today”, saying “I ate twice today” without an “already” sounds odd.
I feel I was old enough to remember when I realised that "kårnfleks" was not a Norwegian word and and actually is spelled "corn flakes". It doesn't make any sense in Norwegian, so the only reason I thought it was a normal Norwegian word is because we pronounced it with entirely Norwegian sounds. A literal and workable translation of "corn flakes" (using corn to mean a kind of grain) would be "kornflak"; or if you would want to translate "corn" in the meaning maize; it would be "maisflak" (which would not surprise me if it has been the name of some cheap store brand corn flakes at some time)
I think it might have been when I realised that the word "kårnfleks" and the text on the box was actually the same word. With English that I've learned both verbally from movies and videos etc. and from reading a lot; I still regularly have that weird experience of suddenly realise that two words I already knew were actually the one word that just have a weird spelling. Like when I suddenly realised that /segwei/ meaning to seamlessly go from one topic to the next that I knew from podcasts; and the word "segue" that I knew from reading (and just assumed was pronounced /segju/ or something) that meant the same was not only synonyms but the same word!
Speaking of the American internet and the use of "got" vs. "gotten", I think it's interesting that the AOL message was "You've got mail", which is either the British ambiguous form or the American non-present-relevant form, rather than the American present-relevant "You've gotten mail". I think that "You've gotten mail" would've been a better fit, as the message normally indicated that the user had received mail in the time since they last used the application. Thanks for the video!
This got me thinking (no pun intended lol) about how in Spanish, you see a similar thing. In Spain and Equatorial Guinea, there's a heavy "preference" towards the past participle. Whereas in American countries, there's a preference towards the preterite. It's pretty much the same idea, and if you speak Spanish from one place or the other (or if like me you learned in one place), you realize that even though these tenses exist in all variants of Spanish, they express *almost* different things in different places, and again, very similarly to your examples here. Like if someones said "I have eaten" (he comido) in Spain, they probably mean they JUST ate just now, whereas in most American dialects, that would be expressed with "I ate" (comí) or "I just ate" (ya comí). Saying "I have eaten" when you just did it could sound really weird to a speaker of an American dialect of Spanish, but saying "I haven't eaten" (no he comido) sounds fine for some reason.
Yeah, I’m a native Spanish speaker and I am grateful for the extra tenses that allow for more specificity in the language. To me, “Yo he comido” means something that **has** happened in the past, while “Yo comí” means something that happened in the past. Extra emphasis on the **has**! I find it difficult to explain but yeah.
@@sam_9228 what you just said can be translated to English in a pretty much exact way, so I feel like extra tenses in Spanish don't add anything special here. "Yo he comido" is word for word "I have eaten" while "Yo comí" is "I ate." I agree with what you said (and it seems you already know the translations), but as a person who has studied Spanish, I wouldn't say that this is a part of Spanish that differs from English that much
Interesting- I was always taught "acabo de comer" to mean "I have just eaten" as opposed to "ya he comido" which would in my head mean "I have already eaten"
I was interested to see your reference to "gotten" in Shakespeare, which I didn't know. It's a Scots usage, certainly in the north-east where I grew up, and as a child I remember my Mum being surprised to hear Americans saying "gotten" which she thought of as specifically Scots. If I'd answered your poll, I would have preferred "got" if speaking English, but "gotten" if speaking Scots. I also remember a story my Mum was told by a teacher friend (in the days when Scots was disapproved of at school). A pupil had read something she'd written and the teacher asked the class what was wrong in it. Another pupil answered, "Please Miss, she's putten "putten" where she should have putten "put".
On your last point about Corn Flakes, interestingly the cockerel logo is Welsh, because the Welsh word for cockerel, "ceiliog" is similar to Kellogg's name.
That's simply not true. It's a breakfast cereal and the rooster crowing is a universal symbol of morning. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
To my American ear, the simple past verbs imply a context-sensitive chronology, while the past perfect forms do not imply a chronological sequence. If one says "Bob ate lunch and Joe cleared the table", that would impyl that the actions happened in the order given, at a time which would typically have been established by other context. If I receive a message that says "You got three packages" and "you got two packages", I would perceive that I had received a total of five packages. By contrast "You have received three packages" followed by "You have received two packages", I would wonder whether something which had been thought to be a package for me, wasn't, and so the total number of packages I had received might be only two. A distinction not yet mentioned is that both "got" and "gotten" forms can act as auxilliary verbs with infinitives, but the constructs mean different things. "I have gotten to know him better" would have a very different meaning from "I have got to know him better". Anyone arguing the words mean the same thing has got to be kidding.
Interesting. Also as an American, I feel it’s the other way around. If I got 3 packages, and then 2, I would assume it went down to 2. If I receive 3, then 2, I would assume I have 5.
@@TBH_Inc I guess I would associate "You got three packages" as being an unsolicited indication of something that has just happened, whereas "You have received three packages" as being a response to a direct or period query "How many packages have I received since I last visited to pick them up".
i had gotten sick, makes more sense for the recent past, because I would never write 'I have gotten sick" unless it was and still is happening NOW. You could be more clear by writing 'Bob had eaten lunch and then Joe cleared the table' where as 'Bob ate lunch and Joe cleared the table' implies to me, these events happened at the same time, not as you say 'in the order given'
@@charlesheyen6151 To my ear, "I have gotten sick when going on that ride" suggests that one became sick on more than one occasion on the ride, and would expect to get sick if one went on the ride in future. Saying "I had gotten sick..." would imply that one has in the past gone on the ride and become sick, but one would expect that something has changed that would prevent that in future. Saying "I got sick going on that ride" would imply that one went on the ride, and became sick, once.
@@flatfingertuning727 "I have gotten sick when going on that ride" is grammatically broken though. The correct expression would be: "I have gotten sick when I had gone on that ride". Essentially, you performed something akin to an ellipsis, but for time relevant information (An ellipsis is omission of words, thus the "akin to"). You said that you once went on this ride ("I have gotten"), but then you switch to the future continuous with which you implied the "would expect to get sick if one went on the ride in [the] future" (going to get sick). It's just not a good use of grammar, and sounds horrible in written form but works fine in colloquial or/and verbal speech thanks to intonation and tonal emphasis.
As a non-native speaker who is exposed to both British and American English, I pick and choose what helps me be more precise, so I use "this video has gotten 1 million views" (like the Americans) and the present perfect tense for present-relevant sentences (like the British).
As another non-native I've gotten even further with this (that it's sadly can't be considered correct, but still so efficient). I pronounce "their" the American way and "there" the British way😄
Yeah, I’m originally from the US but moved to the UK about 5 years ago to work on my master’s and now my PhD. There are certain British phrases that I have found extremely useful and use even if I’m in the presence of American (ex. “sorted” is part of my everyday vocabulary). But there are also Americanisms that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try (ex. “backpack”) and some that I actually prefer (ex. “season” vs “series”; I like it because it distinguishes between the whole tv show or just part of it).
What a fascinating insight! As a non-native English speaker living in US my ear is trained to spot grammar inconsistencies because I learned the language “the correct British way” back in my country. I hardly ever question the use of present relevant past here in US, in fact, sometimes I would almost convince myself that my own recollection of the correct/formal grammar might be outdated, wrong..
Now that I'm thinking of it, the got/gotten thing interesting. Got and gotten are both used in American English obviously, but whether one or the other is used is highly dependent on the context. For example, I would say something like "I've gotten really used to getting up early", but I wouldn't say "I just gotten an email".
Yeah I remember elementary school teachers growing up correcting that in speaking and writing. In American schools you’re vigorously taught to not say “I’ve got” or “You’ve got” and kids generally take to it well, but it does occasionally come out in slangier contexts, like the pep-talk phrase “You’ve got this.” But then when I got older it was weird to hear Brits using “got” all the time in what otherwise sounded like a more formal “smarter” accent. It’s one of the few things that makes the British accent sound dumber to American ears lol
We do use both but I think it is based entirely on how it sounds. Sometimes "have got" is preferred to "gotten" depending on how it feels to the ear when enunciated.
Hello, I’m American, and the example you gave “I’ve just got this email from a friend” doesn’t sound that bad to my American ears. What does, however, sound wrong to my American ears, is using “got” instead of “gotten” or “been” in a passive verb: “I’ve got killed in Minecraft many times” “I’ve got promoted” “I’ve got hit”
I really appreciate how you completely avoid using value judgements in your videos. You just present information as it is, and do so very clearly. As an American English speaker, I find myself using have got and gotten almost completely interchangeably, and had never even thought about the difference before, so this prompted me to really analyze what I'm actually saying when I speak.
I grew up in rural Scotland and have used the word since I was young. I remember being challenged on it being an Americanism when I went to a CofE school when I moved to England. I believe its a word that is informal British English that fell out of usage in the 1800s. Although it's usage is case based. I generally use a hybrid accent because my family is quite mixed with Scottish, Geordie and RP. I think the problem with the plain past gets worse as the terms get shorter that's quite regressive linguistically in my opinion. Towards the end of typing this you've confirmed what I argued at school and used the same examples.
What a wonderful video. Also, I'm amazed how few cuts there actually are. Nowadays we just don't see uncut footage. Where a cut would be (transitioning from point A to point B), you merely pause ♥️ I love that. You're a great lecturer, I can tell.
I might suggest another channel, Lindybeige, if you'd like to see another similarly skilled orator. He has 40+ minute information-packed videos without a single cut.
Regarding your comment about young Brits adopting American pronunciations/American phrases, I’m reminded of a comment I got when I was in the car with someone while recently on vacation in the UK (I’m American). He commented to me that his kids were constantly using American pronunciations for words like “yogurt” (which I always imagine with an “oh” vowel sound rather than the “ah” vowel sound). He also talked about his kids using words like “dump” rather than “tip” to talk about where one takes their trash. (Or rubbish-the fact that Americans in Hawaii say rubbish rather than trash or garbage is a story for another comment…)
Great video, thanks. When I had my first professional writing job for the web (1996), my editor told me off for using ‘gotten’, saying that ‘there was no such word’. But, it was familiar in spoken English where I grew up (West Sussex) and was used by my and other local families. Since you reference its use by Shakespeare, I suspect that this is one of those older English words with usage preserved by our American and Canadian cousins rather than an invention. I sometimes feel that the establishment tried to ‘enclose’ the English language in the 18th century in the same way they enclosed our common land. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but hopefully you get my point.
'Got/ gotten' has perhaps also been influenced by its 'forgot/forgotten' compound-verb cousin, although I note that 'forgot' as past participle also exists in some religious songs from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Some grammatical differences that always fascinate me are verbs to denote possession. The British preference is easily seen in "I've got a lov-ely bunch of coconuts" (Well, that dates me, doesn't it?). If Americans wanted to say the same thing , it would be "I have a lovely bunch of coconuts". And I've noticed this is a consistent difference in EFL and ESL textbooks written in the UK and America. I wonder will Brits adopt this from the internet as well. Another one is "I've been stood/sat here for hours." Americans typically use the present perfect continuous: "I've been standing/sitting here for hours." Let's see if the American usages catch on in the UK and Ireland.
I'm a 76yo Englishman, and I've always used 'I have'. I don't remember ever hearing a US American, in life or on the screen, say 'I have' except in the sense 'I have to'.
As an Aussie who grew up in the 60s, I recall when I was about 10 years old getting into trouble at school for using the word gotten in a composition (written essay). My teacher told me that it was incorrect, American slang. Although I have never used it since in my writing (even informally), I do use it in every day speech with friends and family.
@@domoisawsome123 OK, it is 'obsolescent'. IE, on the way out, except for its new found fame among those who want to sound slightly more pompous and important.
The past tense point you made is interesting because I can almost see it going both ways. I think as an American I also generally use “have past participle” to mean relevant to the present, but actually if I put emphasis on the have part I think it could do the opposite. E.g., “Did you subscribe?” “I *have* subscribed but I no longer do.” A lot of these things about my own language never were clear to me until I studied Spanish or French, and then I started thinking about them differently. I do think also that American English tends to use “was …” as an imperfect like Spanish uses “hablaba, decía, hacía” etc. but I feel like there are some circumstances where we use “was …” in a way that other languages might use the preterite. I wonder if this is so in British English as well.
It is really interesting and amazing how language change so quickly. Most of the time we do not even notice when it happens. I've noticed my English lexicon and even pronunciation transforming with the media I consume. Indeed exposure over time creates changes in the linguistic behaviour of people.
This phenomena is also observed in Portugal and Spain, where youngsters are adopting verbal forms more commonly used by Brazilians and Latino Americans, respectively.
@@mep6302 The last time I was in Madrid (about three months ago) the waiter (Spaniard) asked me if I wanted to pay em efectivo o tarjeta. I was expecting a tocateja, so I asked my colleague if efectivo was also used in Spain and he said that it’s getting popular by the day because of exposure to content produced in Latin America and migration. One thing that was shocking to me was the use of ustedes instead of vosotros. Albeit not as popular as “en efectivo”, but not less surprising. He gave me more examples, but I must confess that I don’t remember them.
@@rafa-borges I didn't know "efectivo" wasn't used in Spain. I've never been there so thanks for the info. About vosotros vs ustedes. I sometimes use vosotros but just imitating a Spaniard or trying to sound funny or archaic. Otherwise I'd never use it. Maybe it's the same in Spain when they try to imitate a Latin American speaker. As far as I know, ustedes is used in Canarias and some Andalusian regions. It's also used sometimes when they want to speak formally because I've watched some TikToks and TH-cam videos from Spaniards and when they're speaking to lawyers they use ustedes and not vosotros. Let me give you an example: I was going out and I told my sisters jokingly "Me voy. Portaos bien tías". In this case I was imitating a Spaniard because I really like how they speak and their use of vosotros and pronunciation of z has always fascinated me. What I don't understand is their constant use of tío and tía for boy and girl. It's very weird outside of Spain.
@@mep6302 I'm American (US) and met two Americans who had been missionaries in Mexico. They were teaching the Bible to poor kids, and the kids said they didn't understand those strange verb forms (the vosotros forms) because they'd never seen them before.
@@sluggo206 That's because they're not exposed to internet. They've only been exposed to their dialect of Spanish. So that's understandable. The first time I read vosotros and its forms was in a Bible. Afterwards with videogames and internet.
Very much needed video! I study British English grammar books and I see the present perfect tense, but I often somehow fail to relate that knowledge to what I hear on London streets or online. I always assumed that the Brits are right and I am wrong, but it always made be feel frustrated that I myself can’t get it right. Basically, the books tell me I am wrong when I nothing but imitate the British I hear! It’s so deliberating to hear that at the moment the rules are all over the place and no one will judge me harshly for whichever tense I apply.
What I rememeber from the time I started learning english (about 45 years ago) is that simple past referred to a specific time in the past ("I went to London this summer") whereas present perfect was about something that belonged to the past but would somehow still influence us in the present ("I don't want to go to London, I've been there twice"). In greek language, it could be the same. A conversation between frineds would be like -"Πάμε να φάμε κάτι;" ("Shall we go to eat something?") -Όχι, έχω φάει" ("Νo, I'VE EATEN") -"Πότε έφαγες;" ("When DID you eat?") "-Έφαγα πριν από μία ώρα" ("I ATE an hour ago").
Excellent video. I thought I would point out about the "followed" issue in American English. It's a new form of the verb that is more akin to pressing a button rather than the genuine form of the verb. So I would say "I followed him on Twitter" (clicked the follow button) but in real life I would say "I've become a follower of Jesus". It's similar with the word friend. Online we'd say "I friended you" (clicked the friend button) but in real life we'd say "we became friends" or less common "we've become friends"
This video has gotten me questioning everything. I'm Irish, in my 50s. For me 'gotten' has always been part of my vocabulary. But what if it wasn't a word commonly used when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s? I have no real way to tell if it was or wasn't. Back then Irish television was mostly limited to two channels, with a lot of American content. I was a bookish boy (and still am) and read a lot of American authors. Having watched your video I now reluctantly come to the tentative conclusion that it was this cultural cross-pollination that added 'gotten' to my vocabulary. Added to this I haven't lived in an English-speaking country in the past 35 years. I see my English as something of a time capsule, though obviously books and audio-visual content have continued to exert an influence of my idiolect. Anyway, thoughts suitably provoked. I have certainly 'gotten' a lot more than I bargained for from watching this video.
I noticed how at 5:58 to show off Brits using gotten, you used some videos in order to display this, but something to have in mind is that a lot of TH-cam videos are very thoroughly international productions. It could've very well been written by an American or Canadian, or even a non-native English speaker who learned American English first, and only spoken by a Brit. Might be interesting to see how this phenomenon relates to fully British productions.
Even when the speaker wrote the the script themselves you’re seeing people like Tom Scott that spend a lot of time engaging with Americans online. This close interaction does have an effect on the speech.
@@niallrussell7184 This is pretty much irrelevant. I don't see an American audience suddenly losing the ability to understand English when written and presented by an Briton or vice versa for that matter. It has never been an issue before.
Yes, I've found that British TH-camrs will pander to American viewers, as they are seen as the largest audience. Thus, release times for videos, inclusion of American terms (or explanations of British terms) or even the outright substitution of British terms with American ones has occurred.
I've noticed the social media "followed you" also being confusing when translated to Swedish. Twitter used to show it as "följdes av" which means "was followed by", an error from word for word translation of "followed by". It kept confusing me, interesting to see why! (The new phrase is "följs av" which means something like "is followed by").
7:02 I would suggest that including the words “just,” “already,” and “yet” would already imply that what you did is relevant to the present so it might seem superfluous to us to conjugate it in the “have” form.
Wow truly a fascinating subject. From an ESL teaching perspective (and as an American😅) , I think the got-gotten distinction is natural and decreases ambiguity which is always* a good thing imo. I've very much appreciated your videos I have benefited from them immensely, especially your Vowel video. And that has helped me teach my students better
As an American (Minnesota) I see and use “gotten” to indicate that the status of something has changed (“it’s gotten a lot hotter outside”) and “got” as an indication of purchase or ownership (“I got this book online”)
Notice that you wrote a preceding contraction of It HAS. I pity the poor Minnesotan whose tongue has been twisted, brains blenderized, by competing Nordic, German, and Irish. The peculiar accent was blessedly disappearing concomitant with the advent of television and MTV, but rose again in some dark night of Corona Virus, like Dra-cool-ah, mentioned above, biting and bloodletting all known language which latter gasped and sank, perhaps for the final time into the frozen abyss.
@@briseboyTV is not affecting accents... That's a myth. Accents and dialects are to a large degree generational and basically have always been subject to historical change, going back centuries.
This is very interesting. As an American who is probably around your age (? just guessing), I was always taught that using "gotten" was "proper" and using "got" in that context was basically "uneducated" and "wrong." I had no idea that in British English it as perfectly fine. Now I also have a better understanding of why I have heard so many British people say things like "I was sat here" which sounds wrong to an American.
Interesting. As a Brit, its the reverse for me. Gotten sounds informal and improper. Instering also that AOL choose to go with 'You've got mail'. Would that be for formality, instead of the american 'You've gotten mail'?
@@sdtfoxon We wouldn't say "You've gotten mail" because it implies we've already received it in the past. "You've got mail" means there's mail (in this case, email) waiting to be received and read. We might say "gotten" in a longer sentence such as, "You've gotten mail here at work for the last three months".
@@sdtfoxon In American English "You've got mail" is an informal way of saying "You have mail" whereas "You've gotten mail" would be an informal way of saying "You have received mail"
I lived in the UK for 9 years. "Was sat" and "was stood' is also considered pig ignorant by my late British husband and his Oxbridge educated friends. I asked specifically.
As a American who listened to British TH-camrs growing up, I’ve used “ages” for a very long time (for ages you might say 😉) and it’s pretty common among a lot of my peers who also watched the same content growing up, while it’s very uncommon for anyone older than me to use the phrase. So it can definitely go both ways!
How about the use of the simple past in conditional sentences for past hypothesis where most Brits (and non-natives like myself who've been studying the grammar for decades) use the past perfect? I've noticed many Americans say "I didn't see her yesterday, that's why I didn't tell her. If I SAW her yesterday, I would've told her", where I would say "If I HAD SEEN her...". Is this filtering into British English? I'm guessing not but I'd like to know what you think.
6:00 for the record, some of these people are reading scripts (e.g. the ubiquitous Simon Whistler) written by Americans or atleast non-British speakers.
Another common phrase I hear fellow Brits using nowadays that sounds American to my old ears is "to be excited for + noun" or "to be excited to + verb" eg "are you excited for the concert?' or 'I'm excited to go to the concert.' In my day, it was always 'to be excited about' or just 'to look forward to'.
"flavorful" (sic), "I am (verb) ing it"and "could care less" are some of my pet peeves. That's why I love David Mitchell's "soapbox" video (at TH-cam) called something like "A message to Americans... Couldn't care less.."
@@egbront1506 I’m personally okay with using “off of” when it’s the opposite of “onto”, but “based off of” sounds clumsy. It was definitely taught in school to never use “off of”.
@@primalconvoy What's wrong with flavorful? Probably not a word I would use myself, but it doesn't strike me as _incorrect_. Also not sure what you're referring to with "I am (verb)ing it," but "could care less" definitely annoys me too.
@@nickpatella1525 It's the illogic that gets to me. A base, by definition, sits at the bottom and you build ON it. You really have no other direction to go. The opposite is off and I don't know what purpose that dangling "of" is serving when some people say "off of". I could just about understand "off from", even though that is a tautology.
This topic reminded me of something I noticed with my toddler nephews - before going to school they had a noticeable American twang in their accent (they both born and grew up in UK), we suspected form watching youtube and american cartoons. This was also during covid so very little interaction outside of the tv screen. Now they are both in primary school they are losing much of the American twang and picking more Welsh accent aspects (they are in Wales - they haven't just picked up a different random accent!). Just wondering is this something widespread, even researched - or is it just they were spending too much time watching Paw Patrol!
This is exactly the kind of video where I would like additional information about Canadian English. I'm a native English speaker and I honestly can't think of which one I use. "Gotten" doesn't sound wrong but I can't recall ever using it. Adding the knowledge and data from the literal in-between language could help explain how or why this trend is working. Any other Canadians have a distinct preference for "got" versus "gotten"?
I commented above because I grew up in Alberta after being originally from the UK and then went back to the UK later in life. I never used gotten (which may have also been because I was aware of it being an American word and I had a strong connection with my homeland), but I definitely did not use the present perfect so much, which he alludes to here as well. I know because I was teaching English as a second language (in Poland with British books), the book had the present perfect, and I was definitely having difficulties using it naturally to give examples to the class. I think I eventually told them we did not use it so much in North American English. I have probably gone back more to it now as it has been over 25 years since I left Canada.
Something I noticed when going back into Higher Education and being with students 10 years younger is the dropping of the -ly suffix in adverbs. I would say something like “I guessed wrongly on a question” and they would say “I guessed wrong on a question”. I don’t know where that comes from
That sounds familiar, yeah. As an American, I recall hearing British people say things like "If I remember rightly..." which sounds kind of funny and antiquated to my ear, where I'd say "If I remember right" (though 'correctly' would be more common and preserves the -ly)
Germanisation ;) no, very likely that's not where it comes from at all. But in German adjectives and adverbs are the same, i.e. (the ending of) the word doesn't change when you're describing a verb instead of a noun.
My Android tablet sometimes says "your tablet is running slow", which I find very grating. I'd assumed it was just inappropriate informality for the context (though I doubt I'd ever say that, even in a casual conversation. Things may be slow, but they run slowly, at least for me). Would "running slow" be acceptable in American English?
@@dingo137 Something about that sounds a it wrong to my ears. It feels like it should be "your tablet is running slowly". Or "Currently, your tablet is running slow".
Hey Dr Lindsey, I’m Australian and I was wondering if you could do a video on the Australian accent, in respect to its distinguishing traits and origins in southern British dialects. The reason I ask is that I have encountered southern English speakers who seemed to pass as Australian to my ears or at least come extremely close to passing. I have also encountered many Australians, including myself who can imitate lower class British accents quite decently, but really struggle at anything else. Thanks!
There seems to be some sort of connection. I'm German but spent most of my childhood in Perth, WA. When attending university, the linguistic professor, a South African, asked me if I were from the south of England because of my accent. Even later when visiting the UK with my English classes native speakers thought my accent was southern English.
Fascinating to me is that as a Jamaican speaker whose English is entirely based on school and the media I consume, I didn't even notice these differences. I've used both gotten and got as past participle and it never once crossed my mind that they aren't just interchangeable. I think I do side with the Brits on the past tense vs present perfect thing however there is no form of oddity hearing "I just ate" even if I'd tend not to produce that as an English sentence
I learned (American) English as a second language mainly from youtube and always wondered why, in my (British) English classes in school, the only thing I had trouble with was distinguishing the present perfect and the simple past. This video explains a lot
I'd be really interested in how Australian English has been changing alongside both the Americanisation of English, and the fact we descended from British English and have made our own evolutions of it.
I prefer to use something of a hybrid of UK and US English. Mostly British English but dropping some of the fanciful spellings and words like catalogue and whilst. I almost never use "got" though, as I find there is almost always a shorter and less ambiguous way to phrase sentences that would otherwise contain it. For example "have got" is almost always redundant and can just be "have".
There is a whole 'nother topic on how "Southern" dialect has changed due to television and that American regional dialects have almost gone away with television. What you hear today in regional dialect is nothing compared to what it was just 50 years ago. So it is affecting us all in some way or another.
That's a widely held belief, but I've been persuaded by counterarguments that those changes would have happened no matter what because of migration and social, cultural and educational changes. There are still plenty of distinct accents out there, even though some have faded. AAVE certainly is as strong as ever, and I notice it among the highly educated Black colleagues I worked with in a major library system where accents range from strong to sounding like me (I'm white), and many colleagues using "libary" and "aksed." As a kid there were things I saw and heard on TV that were different from what I knew, like fashion and specific terms. They went into a place in my head as "what TV people are like." I thought soda was a special TV word for pop. And when I lived on NYC and DC, I was one of many people surprised to learn that, yes, I have a (very soft) regional accent, and that some of my vocabulary is hometown specific, like "treelawn" or "devil's strip," the grass between the sidewalk and the street.
@@McPierogiPazza AAVE is a made up language. It is not a dialect. Blacks have been doing this for so long, they just think it is their dialect. When in fact, they can speak English just like a first generation American can speak it.
@@nicholasvinen in Yorkshire we take out the word "the" a lot and just have a glottal stop... "the" adds no information and has become vestigial in Yorkshire dialect. eg: "do you want to go t' pub?"
Foreigner here. First of all, this all is genuenly very fascinating to listen to, thank you for the video. Secondly, as a bit of personal context, I was taught by a teacher who was teaching me almost strictly British English, but since then the Internet left its huge mark on my vocabulary and grammar and speaking habits so just like those young Brits you mentioned, I'm pretty much an amalgamation of "British base" and "American paintjob" on top. With that out of tht way, In my opinion 'gotten' may be better to adopt while keeping past participle for the very reason you've mentioned -- decreasing ambiguity. Not that my opinion matters much or have the power to influence anybody, but TH-cam lets one vioce their opnions so that's what I'm gonna do. :D
When I was a lad in school (in Tasmania, Australia) in the late ’60s and early ’70s, teachers deplored my using “gotten” on the grounds that it wasn’t proper English but an Americanism or archaic; I continued (and still continue) using “gotten”, when appropriate, on the grounds that (a) the word was good enough for the translators of the KJV (b) good enough for Shakespeare and (c) the related words “forgotten” and “begotten” were good enough to be the past participles of “forget” and “beget”. When people use “I have got” just to mean “I now possess” I maintain that “I have” would be sufficient.
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is what is true of American English also mostly true of North American English?
@@beepboop204 is there any American English besides the North one? 🤔😆
@@MrSvinkoyaschMrSvinkoyasch I suppose Guyanese English would count as South American English.
@@MrSvinkoyaschMrSvinkoyasch i think in general north americans are all more american than we like to admit 🙃
@@simonvaughan6017 I thought it was Jamaican, but your version counts as well
"American publications re-acquire a taste for 'gotten'." ~ "American publications re-acquire a taste forgotten." I loved this little double entendre. Don't know if it was truly intended or not but it was musical. :)
oh my, that's actually genius! LMAO
I both hate and love this language because of this
This is too beautiful to have been intentional. XD
When I read it to camera, I realised it was ambiguous, and was about to re-word it to avoid the ambiguity, but then decided the ambiguity was nice enough to keep it that way.
@@DrGeoffLindsey that was a brilliant move sir - well played! 🤣
I'm Brazilian. During the pandemic, the media talked about how concerned many Portuguese parents were because their kids were talking like Brazilians due to the Brazilian channels on YT they were being exposed to while away from school.
I heard one of the most popular Brazilian TH-cam channels among Portuguese children is a guy who rode on the coattails of his brother's viral rant about what he didn't like about Twilight. Since the author of Twilight has cited the band My Chemical Romance as one of her many inspirations for the series, and since MCR was founded because one of the Way brothers (I can never remember whether it was Gerard or Mikey) wanted to do something "impactful" after 9/11, this led to memes about 9/11 creating a domino effect that led to linguistic shift in Portugal. 😂
Reminds me of when a bunch of American kids apparently learned English accents from Peppa Pig
Looool
@@nickpeitchev7763 I'm British/Spanish living in Portugal. It was a challenge to learn Portuguese but when a Brazillian speaks to me it's like another language. The some of the letter pronounciations don't follow any other European language rules. e.g. R=H, D=J, TE=CH.
@@nathanielescudero5379 Brazil tends to have multiple pronunciations of the same letter depending on dialect. So between Brazil and Portugal, there's radically different ways of pronouncing Portuguese.
I'm from California. I feel a distinct difference between "I just ate" versus "I ate already" versus "I've already eaten" where each seems to indicate a greater range of time in the past. "I just ate" refers to the last few minutes, no more than half an hour or so. "I ate already" is like saying "I'm not hungry, because I ate something within the last couple of hours." And "I've already eaten, " which I don't hear very often, carries a connotation of "no thank you, I ate at some point earlier today and don't require anymore to eat at this time." At least for me. I could even go a step further: "I, like, just ate," (which I think sounds very California) to me implies not only having eaten within the last few minutes, but also having eaten just before or on the way to meeting someone (who then offers you food).
I'm English and to me adding the 'like' sounds very rude, as if you're brushing off the offer of food that someone is giving you
@@tiobridge841 That's why it sounds Californian. :)
I just don’t think the distinguishing matters much. The only reason to offer any form of ‘recently eaten’ in conversation is usually to politely discourage the offer of food or explain why one might not be indulging in food with others.
@@tiobridge841 I can see why it might sound rude but some people just talk like that all the time, it's more of a habit than anything else.
Yes, for me, adding “like” into our speech just makes it choppy, and unclean (sort of improper, i guess). I feel as if people will just be saying “like” at each other all the time if it keeps trending 😅. Either way i find it irritating, but that habit/tendency is definitely very distinctive for a Californian lol
I'm Australian. In 1975 my teacher chastised me for using "gotten" in my essays. Then she went on to explain how ambiguous the word "got" was and requested that I never use it again, but instead substitute more descriptive and unambiguous words.
That basically is "I have a personal distaste for 'got' but I haven't gotten any better words yet, if only another could procure a secure gain with that sort of word, if only one could acquire a developed word to receive or convey what to utilize when to contrive and persuade a different delivery. Yet your teacher doesn't understand most words so it seems like, I have a personal distaste for 'got' but I haven't got any better words yet, if only another could get a get got with that sort of word, if only one could get a got word to get or get what to get when to get and get a different get.
Same in america funnily enough
When I was in at school, nearly 70 years ago, I was advised by my English teacher that the use of the word “got“ was “inelegant“ and I always strive to avoid its use. For example, I would never write “a TH-camr has got 1 million followers“ but, rather, “a TH-camr has 1 million followers“. I must admit that I might use “got“ in speech.
cool pfp
im australian. yeah we have come a far way lol
43 years old, born and raised in England and I've just searched for the world 'gotten' in my email history and there it was, lots and lots of examples of it. To be honest I had literally no idea that it was an Americanism.
Fascinating. Thanks for this.
I'm 41, English and have never used the archaic/American 'gotten'
Why use it?
@@ianholloway3778 It's not archaic, given the fact that it's used all over the US by people of all ages.
@@zeitgeist7788 I think by "archaic" he was referring to its usage by Shakespeare, etc.
I am an American living in the US and have noticed a similar problem. I love to read and mostly use a Kindle. I have a particular fondness for English writers and novels. Often their words are re-spelled into the US form. Or the word will be changed entirely to a more US acceptable one. For example: favourite to favorite or rubbish bin to trash can. I find that part of the charm of reading books from English authors is the difference in words and spelling. I realize that in printed books this practice has gone on for some time, but I feel that electronic reading devices should reflect the language and spelling that the author originally wrote.
It is possible to choose UK English when you set up your Kindle, isn't it?
Thanks for the WARNING! Good god, they're actually screwing around with the original texts? I WILL NEVER BUY A DAMN KINDLE!
They do it on purpose depends what audience it's for. For example in the book "Wonder" the changed "eraser" to "rubber" for the British readers.
They even take all the accents written into Dracula out unless you specifically look for it.
If I were a writer published on Kindle I'd be furious at this practice. Same if I were a reader on Kindle. It's not a different language, they don't need to "translate" things.
I'm American and studied abroad in London for a term. I remember one of my professors marking some of my grammar wrong on papers and I had to keep telling her that it was considered correct in American English. It never affected my scores dramatically so I didn't stress about it but was confused the first few times she did it. Also had an English exchange student while in high school and she had the problem of our teachers marking her wrong for spelling certain words with an extra u, like colour. She had to do the same thing and explain it's just a variation and correct in her country. Even here on TH-cam in this very comment it's telling me "colour" is spelled wrong.
I have had Americans tell me that I have 'spelt' wrong.
Or even “wrongly”? (It’s an adverb - modifying the verb ’spell’)!
@@PeteMidg Agreed. I should have written it "spelt wrong".
I have had an American professor in New Zealand question why us Kiwis use spelt instead of spelled. It’s very normal here - is it an Americanisation or the opposite? I never even thought of it till she raised it.
@@ek-nz plus, 'spelt' is a kind of grain/wheat crop, isn't it?
5:39 Idk about that. I’m born and raised in NJ, and I would say “i got an email from a friend” to mean “i received an email from a friend.” To me, “gotten” usually means “has,” or “has become,” as well as “received,” but “got” can also mean received in certain applications where “gotten” just doesn’t sound right. Idk why, but “got” is both present tense for “have” and past tense for “received.”
I'll show this to my British friend next time he complains I shouldn't use "gotten" because it sounds American...
Gotten is also just horrible, and shouldn't be used by anyone of any nationality. It is ugly and unnecessary and, for that reason Brits stopped using using it about 500 years ago. A few 'misbegotten' people abroad haven't quite caught up yet. Extra 'u's in spellings such as 'colour' are ok, as they are virtually inaudible, and also explicable as a variant transition from other languages : eg 'couleur' /colour /color etc
Your "friend" is ignorant.
Why are you here, Sabine? Can your lust for knowledge never be satiated?
But this word doesn't sounds American. It comes from Old English.
The words "gotten" and "punk" are to be found in Shakespeare.
I'd love to know what you think about Australian english. You often compare and contrast features of British and American english, and Australia has been heavily influenced by both countries. It seems that we've picked a little from column A and a little from column B, and invented a few of our own features. They say a fish can't taste it's own water, so I'm always curious when others comment on our way of speaking. It'd be great to hear your expert opinion if you ever have the time/inspiration to make a video about it.
One difference, as an American from the Great Lakes region, is the idiom "a fish can't taste its own water." I've NEVER heard that saying before, but I love it!
If you're interested in language and want to regularly hear Australian and American English contrasted, I highly recommend the podcast Because Language! Two of the three hosts are an Australian and an American living in Australia.
I'm a Brit who has spent a lot of time in Southern Africa and a fair bit of time in North America. To my ear Ozzy English is far closer to British English than any other, even that of New Zealand. (I am writing in terms of grammar and vocabulary)
canadian english is a mix of us and uk english too, taking some words like "curb" and "fries" from us (uk: kerb, chips) and "colour" and "litre" (us: color, liter) from uk and the term "washroom" (outside canada: bathroom, restroom) by itself, then there are words like vAYse/vAHse, where it can vary
@@notwithouttext and then there's some of it that's just pure Canadian!
I was surprised you didn't mention "ill gotten gains", which has been an idiomatic exception to the rule in the U.K.. Love your work and subtle humour. You deserve a million subs!
I'm a Canadian. A bit closer to American than British
I've got $2000 is about my net worth. I've gotten $2000 is about the revenue of a recent transaction.
"I've done it" is more final and important than "I did it" and I feel like this holds in general.
American here. I agree with everything you've said.
(American here.) I agree with your analysis of the first pair, but for "I've done it" vs "I did it," the former has more of a sense of accomplishment, whereas the latter feels more like simply stating that a task is complete.
"I've done it! I ran a whole marathon!"
"I did it, I took the trash out."
Agree on got/gotten, but I think the meaning of have done/did is better communicated orally with context, and the emphasis on accomplishment is lost when it's only in writing. For example, when Joe Biden (had?) won the US presidential election, Kamala Harris made the famous call when to let him know "We did it, Joe." Clearly it was a big moment (and ripe for memes lol).
@@joe5923 But it's hard to imagine a British person saying "I've got old." Or "I've got fat."
@@thomicrisler9855 I'm Canadian. "I did it. I learned to speak French." An accomplishment? But the 2 expressions to me mean about the same to me.
As a non-native speaker of English this video makes me wonder about the origins of my English grammar. In school we were taught British English, but as I've spent so much time online, by now much of it is likely to be American English 🤔
I find that it is unusual to hear none native English speakers speaking English. Usually they are taught American. For a long time Chinese were taught English rather than American, but I suspect that this is no longer the case. Ditto India.
If you learn English from the internet other than m8 and a few words, the internet is overwhelmingly American, I mean there's over 330 million of us.
Oh! The hustles of learning English as a second language... and it's mandatory 'cause it's the official language.
When I lived in Germany for couple years I noticed a lot of the germans i made friends with spoke english with a british accent. They had a german britsh accent it was very surprising and amusing to me.
@@occamraiser Ching Chang Chung
The way I hear it, "I ate" and "I've eaten" are both ambiguous, and it's the word "just" that does the heavy lifting.
Hey professor! Same thing happening between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, mainly because of internet (streaming services, youtube, tiktok etc). Portuguese parents "worry" their kids are catching BR accent.
Someone saying "você"
Portuguese: 😱😡😭💀💀
Brazilian: 😊😇😄😃
However, when you say the final s and say vocêS instead of você
Portuguese suddenly: 😊😇😄😃
Seriously. It's ridiculous
I listen to Brazilian and Cape Verdean music (and some Portugal and Angolan) and love different features from both versions of Portuguese. Brazilian really enunciates vowels and sounds good while singing, and Cape Verdean has a familiar sound to me as a Spanish speaker (except when they use Crioulo) and speakers from Cabo Verde sound even clearer to me then Portuguese from Portugal lol. 😊
As a South American I find this good, I hope Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese becomes more used than it's European Counterpart, it's good revenge for the colonization they did to our natives hahaha
@@HereGoesKevinIt's difficult to happen in Spanidh because there isn't a single Latin American accent to begin with. There are many clearly different accents to begin with. And there isn't a single media power in the Spanish speaking world like there is in the English-world with the US.
@Música______________ Eh, I think the Mexican accent, or should I say lack of it, it's easier to understand. But at the end of the day, it all depends on your preference/background.
As an American who is perhaps slightly younger than you, even I have noticed the speech patterns of younger Brits changing, but it's always fascinating to hear about it with more rigor than i generally apply.
Your videos are both entertaining and informative - thanks!
Thanks for the kind words
I will assume that you meant "rigour" rather than "rigor" ;)
I was in a group of eight people that would play a game twice a week for two hours and use voice chat. One of our number was eighteen years old and I had no idea she was British until the time zone difference got brought up (the rest of us are in the US). Even when I try I can barely detect her accent and she was raised 100% in England.
Yes, I just made a separate comment about this. My best friend is British and she has a very distinctive British accent but will use a lot of American English words and phrases and some she’ll even pronounce in the American way (ex. “schedule”)
I saw a movie a few years ago set in Glasgow. I was amazed that the swear words used were totally North American. Did we borrow from the Scots or did they borrow from us?
4:47 - Interesting point about the ambiguity of "has got". I was thinking about this the other day when I saw an ad for "Britain's got talent". It quite clearly means "Britain has talent" but the use of the present perfect (to have + participle) suggests an action started in the past.
54 year-old Englishman here, born, raised, and still living in Hertfordshire. I'm very fond of gotten, though it was certainly never part of my language when I was younger. As best I recall it was dismissed as either archaic or American, and not - or no longer - a feature of British English. But some time in, I think, my thirties I realised (or read) that even us British English speakers instinctively understand and use the difference between "forgot" and "forgotten", and the distinction between got and gotten is EXACTLY THE SAME. Made sense to me and I've used it ever since.
According to this video (4:36 onwards), the distinction in American English between "got" and "gotten" is not the same as the difference between "forgot" and "forgotten", because "has gotten" and "has got" both exist in American English but mean different things. So it is not just a case of one being the simple past tense and the other being the past participle, as is the case with "forgot" and "forgotten".
@@joe5923 It's not "irrelevant". The original comment said that the difference between "forgot" and "forgotten" and the distinction between "got" and "gotten" is "EXACTLY THE SAME". They even capitalised the words. The words "exactly the same" mean that there are no differences. The existence of a difference in usage proves that they are not exactly the same.
@@omp199 One is past tense the other is present tense.
@@sinisterisrandom8537 No, "get" and "forget" are the present-tense forms.
It's incredibly annoying and signals that the speaker watches a bit too much American television
Since the US and UK have such a strong relationship, and all languages naturally evolve continuously, it’s only natural that our linguistics are converging based on our significant interactions.
I agree, and in my opinion, this is a good thing. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in the US. Even as a teenager, I was already reading a fair amount of British literature, and of course many of my favorite rock bands were British, though their singing style often sounded more American. But I remember that around 2000 or so, the availability of British media in the US really began to explode -- first with the availability of British newspaper articles online, and then a bit later with widespread availability of British TV shows and British TH-cam channels. And I'm sure that people in Britain are getting a steady diet of American TV, movies, and other media. While the quirks that make our versions of English distinct are interesting, and will probably never go away completely, I think it's better for people on both sides if our versions of English grow together than if they diverge and become more and more different over time.
@@Paul71H - I likewise had a mix of books published in the U.S. and elsewhere during my childhood. In fact, a few years ago I looked up the first book I read and realized that I must have gotten an advanced readers' copy or something because it turns out it was by a British author and I read it at least two years before its first publishing date.
I don’t think they’re converging, because that would imply it is happening in both directions. The internet is highly america-centric which unfortunately has given the USA an absurdly disproportionate influence over almost everywhere else. And not just when it comes to language.
@@AndersWatches I would suggest that it’s not equally reciprocal because the US has over 300 million people while the UK only has about 70 million people. The people determine word use so having more people speaking the language is naturally going to have an impact.
@@emjai2122 yes, though I am not convinced the disparity in population sizes is the main contributor to the phenomenon.
It's especially interesting for me to think about how I speak, where different words I use come from, since I've grown up in the internet age in multiple English-speaking countries with different accents and grammar (Australia, Wales - knowing a lot of English people, the United Arab Emirates, with people speaking English from a vast array of different places, and having parents from New Zealand), and also growing up with a lot of influence from the internet with American words, spelling, grammar. A lot of the time I subconsciously switch between different ways of saying things, with different words, different pronunciations, different grammar. It's never just like one place in particular, it's always a combination.
I am an American translator who has been living in Italy for 35 years; when I first got here I came to understand that British English was preferred, and I did my best to adjust - this for someone who had never heard the word "lorry." Well, I adjusted, and in recent years I have begun to notice the phenomena you discuss here. It feels like all my work was for naught.
i hope in the future Italian speaking English sound more like Italian Americans instead of blokes
It feels so, but you realize otherwise, right
Well if you're an American and you've lived in Italy for 35 years, you're not really an American. Sorry to break it to you.
@MediocreMan If he has children in Italy they wouldn't be American, but if he was born in the US no matter how long he is away, he's still American since you don't really get rid of your roots
Its the reason why many immigrants we get can be living here for their entire lives and can never truly adjust, some things just don't go away
You mean "when I had first gotten here" 😎
I found this fascinating. As an American I had no idea "gotten" was an Americanism, having of course grown up with it. Though given the relative population sizes I would suppose there is now more influence of American English on British English than vice versa, there are some instances of British English influencing American. I was a psychology professor at a small university in Nebraska until retiring two years ago, and I often had my students take a personality test devised in England by British psychologist Hans Eysenck. One of the questions on it was "As a child, were you ever cheeky to your parents?". I always had to explain what "cheeky" meant to my students in Nebraska. But for at least a decade I have heard some American newscasters on the network MSNBC use the word "cheeky" without seeming to realize that they have adopted a Britishism that many Americans wouldn't be familar with. For an example that might be a bit more related to grammar, within the last year I have heard a couple of Americans say someone was "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital", which has been the normal American way to say someone is a hospitalized patient. It's too soon to tell if that's really going to catch on over hear, but "in hospital" still sounds weird to me as a 71 year old American. (Of course, "graduated college", which all younger Americans now seem to use. still sounds wrong to me. when I always say "graduated from college", but I really don't know which of those forms is more used in the UK.)
The one Britishism that seems to me to have caught on the most in the USA is "arse" instead of "ass". When I started seeing it online, I thought it was only because of people using it as a joke about how one character in the movie "Braveheart" said one line... but then I still kept seeing more & more of it even years after "Braveheart" wasn't on people's minds anymore.
(The loss of R between a vowel and an S was a rural American shift from I think about a hundred years ago which also includes horse→hoss, burst→bust, and curse→cuss. But the others mostly faded away even in the USA because urban people were still using the older versions with R. "Ass" just took over because of lack of competition because urban people had stopped using any version of it at all by then.)
My American classmate's posh mother used "was graduated from...". I guess this implies that it is the university which graduates the students, rather than the students who graduate themselves.
@@allendracabal0819 Well of course it's the institution of learning that graduates the students. At the university I was a professor at, and I assume most American universities, the entire faculty votes to approve the list of graduating students twice a year. Remember degrees are GRANTED by the institution. You don't grant them to yourself.
I’m not sure “arse” is actually commonly used anywhere in the US, but “bum” has suddenly taken off in the las 15 years or so. I think it’s because others cutesy euphemisms for ass like “patootie” and “fanny” have been mostly abandoned and sound ridiculously outdated and uptight to most people. God only knows why most Americans’ opinion on these words changed, but I agree that to my slightly younger ears those older euphemisms sound like something only an elderly school principal should be saying.
When I hear "in hospital" or "graduated college," I think of them as Canadianisms. Of course, even if that is the case, the Canadians got them from British English.
As an American, "have just seen" is more formal than "just saw", but we use both
My parents, both French, met in Canada. As a child, in France, I remember how strange it felt to realise that some of the words I used every day were in fact not « French from France », and definitely not understood by the other kids in the village - my parents had simply taken them home from Quebec after all the years they’d lived there. If you hear it every day in a familiar context, a phrase is just normal to you, it’s yours.
Ooooh love things like this (stayed in Montreal for 6 months a few years back because I didn't want to do Erasmus in boring old France haha). Could you give us some examples, please?
I used to go grape picking every year back in the 1970s, and one time a bunch of Québécoise were at the same vineyard. French friends said they spoke in a really 'old-fashioned' way - like the French equivalent of 'Shakespearian'. They liked it!
@@altralinguamusica Off the top of my head some examples are bouffe instead of nourriture, bienvenue instead of de rien, char instead od voiture, and of course all the various sacres. :)
@@JakoZestoko It's interesting to see how much English clearly influenced Quebecois French. Bienvenue = welcome, char sounds like car etc
@@JakoZestoko Merci ! Très intéressant !
One example that exists in America is the adoption of “no worries”. I’m 37 and I in fact say it all the time, but I distinctly remember as a child that “no worries” was something only Australians and New Zealanders said on TV and in movies. I think if you told me we were going to adopt a phrase like “no worries” around the time The Rescuers Down Under came out, I would have laughed.
@Atheos B. Sapien You’re definitely right about it being introduced through that movie, maybe even before that. But what I mean is in the early ‘90s it was still a very strange thing to hear an American say no worries, and if they did say it they would feign the Aussie accent along with it, the same as someone pretending to be posh British by saying “chip chip cheerio”. Now I feel like people, including myself, say it all the time. And I’m struck by being able to see that change at the same time as I participate in it, because often enough I think language change is attributed only to the very young, who in turn don’t always even realize they’re changing the language since they have so little experience with it.
I use no worries all the time
One thing Americans say all the time now, but would never have even thought of saying 40 years ago, is “go missing.” I can remember encountering that in British writing for the first time and thinking it was so quirky and weird, because you don’t just “go missing” the way you “go bowling” or something. Anyway, it’s everywhere now, and I’m not sure what spread it to these shores.
@@Fool3SufferingFools That’s interesting. I say that all the time.
@@Fool3SufferingFools so what would you have said instead of go missing? For example, "it was around a week later when his family and friends realized he had gone missing." I can see saying "it was around... friendss realized he was missing." But what about it I just said "he went missing two years ago." Would you use the word missing or just say disappeared or some other word entirely?
Bravo Dr Lindsey! An excellent video.
I seem to remember an anecdote somewhere which illustrated the past perfect/simple past nuance very well. An American was enjoying a late lie-in one morning in bed with his British wife when they both heard a noise downstairs and footsteps. A few moments later their son appeared, with the morning newspaper. They both spoke simultaneously: ‘Ah, you brought the newspaper’ said the American, thinking back to the moment when they heard the noise and footsteps.
‘Ah, you’ve brought the newspaper’ said the wife, as the son handed it to her.
I like these videos because the feeling I get from these, is that there isn't necessarily a right or wrong to one's grammar, or the changing of it. It just is, and as long as people can be understood and communicate with each other, language is doing its job.
Language is doing *its* job.
Sorry, I'm just doing my job as a pedant!
@@simonvaughan6017 No thank you a lot! Haha, I've always had problems with it's versus its. I appreciate the callout!
@@Radditz770 the way i remember is “it’s” can be replaced with “it is” whereas “its” is possessive
@@Radditz770 I'm glad you took it in good part. I suppose I proved your point, in that, even though you wrote "it's" instead of "its", I still understood you. However, I can't bring myself to take such a utilitarian approach to language: I believe in accuracy for its (not "it's"!) own sake.
@@jackputnam4273 Yeah that makes sense ^^ The reason why it doesn't stick for me, is probably because I'm not natively english, and in so many other cases, apostrophe is used for possession.
For example "The dog is over there, its tail is wagging" versus "The dog is over there, the dog's tail is wagging."
I assume it is a matter of pronoun (he she it) versus definite articles (the dog) but my brain has a hard time keeping track of it in typing sometimes, haha. Hopefully it will stick eventually!
In my (Southern United States) grammar, I more closely associate "have" with the *historic* past, in a complete inversion of the British standard. For example, "I have noticed that before" feels like I'm asserting I noticed something months or years ago, while "I noticed that before" feels like I noticed something an hour ago. I suppose I see it as more or less equivalent with the past perfect/pluperfect tense ("I had noticed that before.") In fact, I seem to remember being taught this use of "have" in school, and I might've gotten (see what I did there?) some points taken off of a paper or two for using "have" too often to refer to present-relevant events.
that's not just a Southern US thing, that I believe is taught all over the US. I could be wrong, but I grew up talking that way (originally from NY)
That's a bit wrong. Past perfect means something happened before the past event...
I don't think so. You wouldn't say "I haven't gone there yesterday" neither "I have eaten in this restaurant two years ago", would you?
@@mep6302 Hm, I suppose you're right. "Had" would fit for both of those ("I hadn't gone there yesterday"/"I had eaten in this restaurant two years ago") but "have" wouldn't. I was mistaken then.
@@davideldred.campingwilder6481 I could say "I have eaten in this restaurant for two years". Your example "I had eaten..." is wrong. "I did not go there yesterday" is correct.
This channel is my new favorite niche pastime. Love it from the USA!
"ill-gotten gains" the form still exists in everyday British usage.
I'm not American myself, but I understand that's a common expression in the US too. Some idioms tend to get "locked in" to their forms and resist language changes. Consider these:
A *sunken* ship can't be recovered, so you may write it off as a *sunk* cost.
All those *spilled* tears, crying over *spilt* milk.
Go off the *beaten* track, it's a strategy that can't be *beat.*
Unused words can often survive through idioms. The "deserts" in "just deserts" means "that which is deserved", a meaning that basically doesn't exist anymore in modern English.
Apparently they're called fossil words. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word
@@mrwedge18 also in the past participle of beget is begotten, like in "misbegotten", which afaik is comes be+get (like become = be+come)
@@rhubarbjin spilled is very common in the UK as is beaten (which is present perfect) and sunken is perfect tense.
@@aez1814 Sunken is really only used in an adjectival sense. Similarly, drunk and drunken, proved and proven, struck and stricken. There's a trend to truncate the older class of strong verb participles ending in -en when not used adjectivally.
I'm from Poland and at school we learn British English. I feel really annoyed by it because I can get a worse grade just because of using simple past instead of present perfect. I don't get it. It should be more relevant whether you use one form in your entire text rather than which you choose.
Same here in my country. I was always reprimanded because my English isn't British enough and got lower grades because of it (it's rather American + my accent)
@@mihanich American here, we will take you both lol
British English is better
@@sweetestaphrodite li'l bo'aw o wa'a so bew'ifaw
@@mihanich Is that automatically how you sound when you write in British English? I forgot that’s how it worked.
my favourite example is the spread of the mandative subjunctive present across the atlantic, e.g. “she asked that he close the door”. an entire mood on the brink of death was miraculously revived in america and is is now gaining prominence in the uk again.
You've really lost me... I don't suppose you happen to know of any interesting videos on this particular trend?
@@GameFreak7744 It's a construction found mainly in formal contexts (speech by a politician, an academic discussing a topic, etc.). The ''subjunctive'' is a verb mood that conveys a purpose or desire and is typically used after verbs like ''to ask'', ''to demand'' ''to insist'' etc. In English the subjunctive is only really visible in the third person because that's the only person that gets any inflection at all (verb + s). Example: he instead she wear her favorite gown...
I'm Scottish and gotten has always been used where I live, and I was well into my forties before I discovered that people down south don't use it (this has happened with a few other things and words too, such as Hallowe'en, pled guilty etc.).
I like "pled"!
Thank you
I was trying to decide if "things have gotten worse" was a recent thing for me. However, I'm sure that I've used it all of my 66 years.
That’s interesting bc all those exist in America!
Does Scots use a variation of "gotten"?
Sorry for the crude use of 'British'. Sometimes I try to be more precise, but often I admittedly just hide behind the convention of what dictionaries mean by 'British English'. To be honest, I simply don't know all about the regional and social distribution of 'gotten' in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere, I had a deadline to meet, and the video was already quite long...
One of the oldest widely-recognized YT memes is "I can't believe you've done this". As someone who generally dislikes slapstick humour and people getting hurt, I wondered why I and so many others found the clip hilarious. I think it's the Perfect form phrasing - it sounds unusual. The action was unpleasant, but immaterial, while such a phrase would be used following one of enormity, the underlying grammatical implication being that the present is now in a significantly different state due to that action. However, if I understand correctly, this is actually normal use in Australia, where these forms are used differently from both the UK and US.
Edit: turns out the chap in question actually isn't Australian, but British.
From the beginning it was always amusing to me the part of speech he chose. Without that phrasing, I don't think the clip is nearly as amusing. In America we would have said "I can't believe you did that!". To use "have done this" is amusing because of the understanding that it is still presently relevant. And to my ears, it was so precise as if the speaker had taken the time to gather their thoughts despite having just been slapped. I'm sure it was just the common phrasing for him, but funny to me nonetheless.
I think for some reason us Aussies just tend to use the perfect form phrasing with the word 'this'.
'I've eaten this already.'
'I ate that already.'
These seem intuitive and identical in grammatical meaning to me.
Paul Weedon is English, not Aussie
@@hellbach8879 Oh. Can't believe I've done this.
@@Blanket_ does anyone else say “he ett it/ he’s ett it” as past form of ‘ate/ eaten’ ? I think it’s a London usage as both my brother and I say it!
That last point you made about Cornflakes was exactly what I experienced growing up in Ireland. I thought they were Irish because we have so many farms around where I lived, and many wheat fields, so I was surprised to learn their actual origin. It is an excellent point in supporting that language simply without the need for anyone to consciously make modifications. Fascinating.
CORNflakes - so many wheatfields 😂
@@michaeldubery3593 💀
They were invented by the Kellogg brothers in Michigan in the late 1800s.
There are so many brands and items that I thought were only in Australia because they seemed niche and I never really saw them in movies or on the internet. I thought Specsavers was Aussie and I literally stopped in the street when I saw it after moving to the UK.
I had no idea for good 20 years or so that Cadbury wasn't a New Zealand company.
You're my favorite linguist and this is why. Unlike many, you don't dictate what should be but record and analyze what is. I just had a debate on a different channel where the host said most people mispronounce certain words. I argued no, if most people "mispronounce" them then the pronunciation has shifted. She then argued look at the spelling, to which I replied, "Spelling in English is a casual suggestion." Oodles of words have shifted from their spelling over time. You accept those and only resist this because it's actively happening and you're aware of it.
You are very mischievious!
@@allendracabal0819 That was indeed the word.
That's what makes a linguist in the first place anyway, first thing you learn in linguistics is that you should be a descriptivist not a prescriptivist as a linguist lol
@@Karin-fj3eu Sure, but there are oodles of totalitarians.
Thank you!
For me personally "I've just eaten breakfast" means I ate breakfast recently, meanwhile "I just ate breakfast" means I ate only breakfast and nothing else.
depends which word you emphasize, just or breakfast. Changes the meaning.
The phrase 'reacquired a taste for gotten' was sublime.
Would that be a pun, or a play on words?
@@Dick_Gozinya 'for gotten'/'forgotten'
All of your videos are so so so interesting
Funnily enough, the same conflict between "present-relevant" and "historic" past forms happens in Spanish as well. In countries like Argentina, they tend to overuse the "historic" form; e.g. " *Comí* dos veces hoy" ("I _ate_ twice today"; and today isn't finished yet, where the form " *He comido* would have been more suitable.) Quite the contrary occurs in Spain, where they tend to exploit the "present-relevant" form for events long past in time; e.g. "Mi difunto padre *ha estado* aquí muchas veces" ("My late father _has been_ here many times"; where the old man is sadly no longer with us, rather obviously 😄.) Thank you Dr Lindsey. Your videos are solid gold for us foreign English learners. 👍👍
And that's solid gold for me as a foreign Spanish learner 🤓
@@iamtombh Thank you!! Quite a community of learners he have here 👍
These are two solid examples of when each tense doesn't quite work...nicely done to highlight the difference in usage.
Even as an American, while I would say “I just ate not too long ago” or “I already ate twice today”, saying “I ate twice today” without an “already” sounds odd.
@@nickpatella1525 Agreed. Adverbs can be quite significant too.
I feel I was old enough to remember when I realised that "kårnfleks" was not a Norwegian word and and actually is spelled "corn flakes".
It doesn't make any sense in Norwegian, so the only reason I thought it was a normal Norwegian word is because we pronounced it with entirely Norwegian sounds.
A literal and workable translation of "corn flakes" (using corn to mean a kind of grain) would be "kornflak"; or if you would want to translate "corn" in the meaning maize; it would be "maisflak" (which would not surprise me if it has been the name of some cheap store brand corn flakes at some time)
I think it might have been when I realised that the word "kårnfleks" and the text on the box was actually the same word.
With English that I've learned both verbally from movies and videos etc. and from reading a lot; I still regularly have that weird experience of suddenly realise that two words I already knew were actually the one word that just have a weird spelling. Like when I suddenly realised that /segwei/ meaning to seamlessly go from one topic to the next that I knew from podcasts; and the word "segue" that I knew from reading (and just assumed was pronounced /segju/ or something) that meant the same was not only synonyms but the same word!
you are telling me that "cornflake" translates directly to "kornflak" in norweigian yet they chose to brand it as "kårnflek"? Why?
@@jillgalahan208 no, it's called cornflakes just like in English, but "kårnfleks" is an approximation of how we pronounce it in a Norwegian sentence.
I was using Norwegian spelling. An approximation in IPA would be
/koɳfleks/
(Not too sure about the vowels)
Corn flakes are eeeeevil
Speaking of the American internet and the use of "got" vs. "gotten", I think it's interesting that the AOL message was "You've got mail", which is either the British ambiguous form or the American non-present-relevant form, rather than the American present-relevant "You've gotten mail". I think that "You've gotten mail" would've been a better fit, as the message normally indicated that the user had received mail in the time since they last used the application.
Thanks for the video!
Always makes me think of the MST3k joke "You've got male... pattern baldness."
BABE WAKE UP THERES A NEW DR GEOFF LINDSEY VIDEO
Certified hood classic.
This got me thinking (no pun intended lol) about how in Spanish, you see a similar thing. In Spain and Equatorial Guinea, there's a heavy "preference" towards the past participle. Whereas in American countries, there's a preference towards the preterite. It's pretty much the same idea, and if you speak Spanish from one place or the other (or if like me you learned in one place), you realize that even though these tenses exist in all variants of Spanish, they express *almost* different things in different places, and again, very similarly to your examples here. Like if someones said "I have eaten" (he comido) in Spain, they probably mean they JUST ate just now, whereas in most American dialects, that would be expressed with "I ate" (comí) or "I just ate" (ya comí). Saying "I have eaten" when you just did it could sound really weird to a speaker of an American dialect of Spanish, but saying "I haven't eaten" (no he comido) sounds fine for some reason.
Yeah, I’m a native Spanish speaker and I am grateful for the extra tenses that allow for more specificity in the language. To me, “Yo he comido” means something that **has** happened in the past, while “Yo comí” means something that happened in the past. Extra emphasis on the **has**! I find it difficult to explain but yeah.
@@sam_9228 what you just said can be translated to English in a pretty much exact way, so I feel like extra tenses in Spanish don't add anything special here. "Yo he comido" is word for word "I have eaten" while "Yo comí" is "I ate." I agree with what you said (and it seems you already know the translations), but as a person who has studied Spanish, I wouldn't say that this is a part of Spanish that differs from English that much
@@sam_9228 something like "Yo había estado comiendo" on the other hand is definitely something that is more nuanced than what English has, however
Interesting- I was always taught "acabo de comer" to mean "I have just eaten" as opposed to "ya he comido" which would in my head mean "I have already eaten"
@@wowzagh this is correct
I was interested to see your reference to "gotten" in Shakespeare, which I didn't know. It's a Scots usage, certainly in the north-east where I grew up, and as a child I remember my Mum being surprised to hear Americans saying "gotten" which she thought of as specifically Scots. If I'd answered your poll, I would have preferred "got" if speaking English, but "gotten" if speaking Scots.
I also remember a story my Mum was told by a teacher friend (in the days when Scots was disapproved of at school). A pupil had read something she'd written and the teacher asked the class what was wrong in it. Another pupil answered, "Please Miss, she's putten "putten" where she should have putten "put".
On the matter of 'put,' we now have the dilemma of whether to say something was 'inputted' or 'input.'
I read the putten story in a book called "Yorkshire wit and humour" which could be 70 years old.
On your last point about Corn Flakes, interestingly the cockerel logo is Welsh, because the Welsh word for cockerel, "ceiliog" is similar to Kellogg's name.
That is interesting, I'd never heard of that. Thank you.
That's simply not true. It's a breakfast cereal and the rooster crowing is a universal symbol of morning. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
To my American ear, the simple past verbs imply a context-sensitive chronology, while the past perfect forms do not imply a chronological sequence. If one says "Bob ate lunch and Joe cleared the table", that would impyl that the actions happened in the order given, at a time which would typically have been established by other context. If I receive a message that says "You got three packages" and "you got two packages", I would perceive that I had received a total of five packages. By contrast "You have received three packages" followed by "You have received two packages", I would wonder whether something which had been thought to be a package for me, wasn't, and so the total number of packages I had received might be only two.
A distinction not yet mentioned is that both "got" and "gotten" forms can act as auxilliary verbs with infinitives, but the constructs mean different things. "I have gotten to know him better" would have a very different meaning from "I have got to know him better". Anyone arguing the words mean the same thing has got to be kidding.
Interesting. Also as an American, I feel it’s the other way around. If I got 3 packages, and then 2, I would assume it went down to 2. If I receive 3, then 2, I would assume I have 5.
@@TBH_Inc I guess I would associate "You got three packages" as being an unsolicited indication of something that has just happened, whereas "You have received three packages" as being a response to a direct or period query "How many packages have I received since I last visited to pick them up".
i had gotten sick, makes more sense for the recent past, because I would never write 'I have gotten sick" unless it was and still is happening NOW. You could be more clear by writing 'Bob had eaten lunch and then Joe cleared the table' where as 'Bob ate lunch and Joe cleared the table' implies to me, these events happened at the same time, not as you say 'in the order given'
@@charlesheyen6151 To my ear, "I have gotten sick when going on that ride" suggests that one became sick on more than one occasion on the ride, and would expect to get sick if one went on the ride in future. Saying "I had gotten sick..." would imply that one has in the past gone on the ride and become sick, but one would expect that something has changed that would prevent that in future. Saying "I got sick going on that ride" would imply that one went on the ride, and became sick, once.
@@flatfingertuning727 "I have gotten sick when going on that ride" is grammatically broken though.
The correct expression would be: "I have gotten sick when I had gone on that ride".
Essentially, you performed something akin to an ellipsis, but for time relevant information (An ellipsis is omission of words, thus the "akin to"). You said that you once went on this ride ("I have gotten"), but then you switch to the future continuous with which you implied the "would expect to get sick if one went on the ride in [the] future" (going to get sick).
It's just not a good use of grammar, and sounds horrible in written form but works fine in colloquial or/and verbal speech thanks to intonation and tonal emphasis.
Etymology has always fascinated me, so it's genuinely exciting to actually see our language evolve right before our eyes!
Sometimes exciting, but always fascinating...
I remember the time voice typing misheard my pronunciation of etymology for "entomology", the study of insects 🦗
The language evolving isn't exciting.
@@TedEhioghaeMaybe not for you, but I certainly find it do!
Watching "a part of" morph into "apart of" has been genuinely depressing for me :(
As a non-native speaker who is exposed to both British and American English, I pick and choose what helps me be more precise, so I use "this video has gotten 1 million views" (like the Americans) and the present perfect tense for present-relevant sentences (like the British).
As another non-native I've gotten even further with this (that it's sadly can't be considered correct, but still so efficient). I pronounce "their" the American way and "there" the British way😄
Canadian is the biggest mixture of those. You should try to expose yourself to Canadian English.
@@JesusFriedChrist I always think of Canadian English as American English trying to be British.
Yeah, I’m originally from the US but moved to the UK about 5 years ago to work on my master’s and now my PhD. There are certain British phrases that I have found extremely useful and use even if I’m in the presence of American (ex. “sorted” is part of my everyday vocabulary). But there are also Americanisms that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try (ex. “backpack”) and some that I actually prefer (ex. “season” vs “series”; I like it because it distinguishes between the whole tv show or just part of it).
@@segment1993 They're pronounced the same in British English... as is they're!
"Moving house" LOL. Makes moving sound much more arduous, since you are moving the whole house.
What a fascinating insight! As a non-native English speaker living in US my ear is trained to spot grammar inconsistencies because I learned the language “the correct British way” back in my country. I hardly ever question the use of present relevant past here in US, in fact, sometimes I would almost convince myself that my own recollection of the correct/formal grammar might be outdated, wrong..
Now that I'm thinking of it, the got/gotten thing interesting. Got and gotten are both used in American English obviously, but whether one or the other is used is highly dependent on the context. For example, I would say something like "I've gotten really used to getting up early", but I wouldn't say "I just gotten an email".
Yeah I remember elementary school teachers growing up correcting that in speaking and writing. In American schools you’re vigorously taught to not say “I’ve got” or “You’ve got” and kids generally take to it well, but it does occasionally come out in slangier contexts, like the pep-talk phrase “You’ve got this.” But then when I got older it was weird to hear Brits using “got” all the time in what otherwise sounded like a more formal “smarter” accent. It’s one of the few things that makes the British accent sound dumber to American ears lol
We do use both but I think it is based entirely on how it sounds. Sometimes "have got" is preferred to "gotten" depending on how it feels to the ear when enunciated.
"I've got" is the perfect tense
"I got" is imperfect tense
And 'I've gotten' is another past tense. 'I gotten' is grammatically wrong
Had gotten the mail. I got the mail. have has gotten the mail.
The only youtube channel where everyone spell checks their comments before posting! Haha
Cheers
Ha. But as an American living in the UK my spell checker isn't sure whether I should emphasize or emphasise that point.
Hello, I’m American, and the example you gave “I’ve just got this email from a friend” doesn’t sound that bad to my American ears. What does, however, sound wrong to my American ears, is using “got” instead of “gotten” or “been” in a passive verb:
“I’ve got killed in Minecraft many times”
“I’ve got promoted”
“I’ve got hit”
I really appreciate how you completely avoid using value judgements in your videos. You just present information as it is, and do so very clearly.
As an American English speaker, I find myself using have got and gotten almost completely interchangeably, and had never even thought about the difference before, so this prompted me to really analyze what I'm actually saying when I speak.
I grew up in rural Scotland and have used the word since I was young. I remember being challenged on it being an Americanism when I went to a CofE school when I moved to England. I believe its a word that is informal British English that fell out of usage in the 1800s. Although it's usage is case based. I generally use a hybrid accent because my family is quite mixed with Scottish, Geordie and RP. I think the problem with the plain past gets worse as the terms get shorter that's quite regressive linguistically in my opinion. Towards the end of typing this you've confirmed what I argued at school and used the same examples.
What a wonderful video. Also, I'm amazed how few cuts there actually are. Nowadays we just don't see uncut footage. Where a cut would be (transitioning from point A to point B), you merely pause ♥️ I love that. You're a great lecturer, I can tell.
I might suggest another channel, Lindybeige, if you'd like to see another similarly skilled orator. He has 40+ minute information-packed videos without a single cut.
Regarding your comment about young Brits adopting American pronunciations/American phrases, I’m reminded of a comment I got when I was in the car with someone while recently on vacation in the UK (I’m American).
He commented to me that his kids were constantly using American pronunciations for words like “yogurt” (which I always imagine with an “oh” vowel sound rather than the “ah” vowel sound). He also talked about his kids using words like “dump” rather than “tip” to talk about where one takes their trash. (Or rubbish-the fact that Americans in Hawaii say rubbish rather than trash or garbage is a story for another comment…)
Wow, I've never once heard the word "tip" used in that context. I wouldn't have known what it was.
Japanese has so many loan words from English that it will probably reinforce your English a bit, if anything.
nobody says “tip”
It is part of the fabric of life, it is how languages evolve overtime.
As a Canadian (51 y.o ) gotten is definitely used, and is by far the most common in daily speech.
Great video, thanks. When I had my first professional writing job for the web (1996), my editor told me off for using ‘gotten’, saying that ‘there was no such word’. But, it was familiar in spoken English where I grew up (West Sussex) and was used by my and other local families. Since you reference its use by Shakespeare, I suspect that this is one of those older English words with usage preserved by our American and Canadian cousins rather than an invention. I sometimes feel that the establishment tried to ‘enclose’ the English language in the 18th century in the same way they enclosed our common land. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but hopefully you get my point.
'Got/ gotten' has perhaps also been influenced by its 'forgot/forgotten' compound-verb cousin, although I note that 'forgot' as past participle also exists in some religious songs from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Some grammatical differences that always fascinate me are verbs to denote possession. The British preference is easily seen in "I've got a lov-ely bunch of coconuts" (Well, that dates me, doesn't it?). If Americans wanted to say the same thing , it would be "I have a lovely bunch of coconuts". And I've noticed this is a consistent difference in EFL and ESL textbooks written in the UK and America. I wonder will Brits adopt this from the internet as well. Another one is "I've been stood/sat here for hours." Americans typically use the present perfect continuous: "I've been standing/sitting here for hours." Let's see if the American usages catch on in the UK and Ireland.
Americans say "I've got" or "I got" all the time though 😂
I'm a 76yo Englishman, and I've always used 'I have'. I don't remember ever hearing a US American, in life or on the screen, say 'I have' except in the sense 'I have to'.
@@Antient.Briton While you are 21 years older, I have been speaking American English for most of my 54 years. I would always say "I have".
The most "British" part of that for me is "lovely" lol
As an Aussie who grew up in the 60s, I recall when I was about 10 years old getting into trouble at school for using the word gotten in a composition (written essay). My teacher told me that it was incorrect, American slang. Although I have never used it since in my writing (even informally), I do use it in every day speech with friends and family.
I have to agree with your teacher. It is archaic and unnecessary, just like 'whilst', 'amongst' etc. To use it sounds either pompous or ignorant.
@@rahb1 It's not truly archaic if it's still used though, right?
In America, kids get corrected for the "mistake" of using "got" instead of "gotten". (...and "proved" instead of "proven".)
@@rahb1 I thought the "-st" was a new addition to those words, not the other way around.
@@domoisawsome123 OK, it is 'obsolescent'. IE, on the way out, except for its new found fame among those who want to sound slightly more pompous and important.
The past tense point you made is interesting because I can almost see it going both ways. I think as an American I also generally use “have past participle” to mean relevant to the present, but actually if I put emphasis on the have part I think it could do the opposite. E.g., “Did you subscribe?” “I *have* subscribed but I no longer do.” A lot of these things about my own language never were clear to me until I studied Spanish or French, and then I started thinking about them differently. I do think also that American English tends to use “was …” as an imperfect like Spanish uses “hablaba, decía, hacía” etc. but I feel like there are some circumstances where we use “was …” in a way that other languages might use the preterite. I wonder if this is so in British English as well.
It is really interesting and amazing how language change so quickly. Most of the time we do not even notice when it happens. I've noticed my English lexicon and even pronunciation transforming with the media I consume. Indeed exposure over time creates changes in the linguistic behaviour of people.
Because Internet is a great book, and Gretchen’s narration in the audiobook is phenomenal. Heavily recommend.
0:24 I love this 3-second plug followed by a trap for people still struggling with weak forms with "couldn't not" and the tiniest of smirks.
This phenomena is also observed in Portugal and Spain, where youngsters are adopting verbal forms more commonly used by Brazilians and Latino Americans, respectively.
I'm from Latin America and I haven't noticed Spaniards adopting words from here. Could you tell me some examples please?
@@mep6302 The last time I was in Madrid (about three months ago) the waiter (Spaniard) asked me if I wanted to pay em efectivo o tarjeta. I was expecting a tocateja, so I asked my colleague if efectivo was also used in Spain and he said that it’s getting popular by the day because of exposure to content produced in Latin America and migration. One thing that was shocking to me was the use of ustedes instead of vosotros. Albeit not as popular as “en efectivo”, but not less surprising. He gave me more examples, but I must confess that I don’t remember them.
@@rafa-borges I didn't know "efectivo" wasn't used in Spain. I've never been there so thanks for the info. About vosotros vs ustedes. I sometimes use vosotros but just imitating a Spaniard or trying to sound funny or archaic. Otherwise I'd never use it. Maybe it's the same in Spain when they try to imitate a Latin American speaker. As far as I know, ustedes is used in Canarias and some Andalusian regions. It's also used sometimes when they want to speak formally because I've watched some TikToks and TH-cam videos from Spaniards and when they're speaking to lawyers they use ustedes and not vosotros.
Let me give you an example:
I was going out and I told my sisters jokingly "Me voy. Portaos bien tías". In this case I was imitating a Spaniard because I really like how they speak and their use of vosotros and pronunciation of z has always fascinated me. What I don't understand is their constant use of tío and tía for boy and girl. It's very weird outside of Spain.
@@mep6302 I'm American (US) and met two Americans who had been missionaries in Mexico. They were teaching the Bible to poor kids, and the kids said they didn't understand those strange verb forms (the vosotros forms) because they'd never seen them before.
@@sluggo206 That's because they're not exposed to internet. They've only been exposed to their dialect of Spanish. So that's understandable. The first time I read vosotros and its forms was in a Bible. Afterwards with videogames and internet.
Frankly, growing up in Sixties Britain, my parents told me never to say "got" at all and use "have/had" instead.
I’m an American and my American mother would correct me every time “gotten” slipped out of my mouth!
Very much needed video! I study British English grammar books and I see the present perfect tense, but I often somehow fail to relate that knowledge to what I hear on London streets or online. I always assumed that the Brits are right and I am wrong, but it always made be feel frustrated that I myself can’t get it right. Basically, the books tell me I am wrong when I nothing but imitate the British I hear! It’s so deliberating to hear that at the moment the rules are all over the place and no one will judge me harshly for whichever tense I apply.
What I rememeber from the time I started learning english (about 45 years ago) is that simple past referred to a specific time in the past ("I went to London this summer") whereas present perfect was about something that belonged to the past but would somehow still influence us in the present ("I don't want to go to London, I've been there twice"). In greek language, it could be the same. A conversation between frineds would be like -"Πάμε να φάμε κάτι;" ("Shall we go to eat something?") -Όχι, έχω φάει" ("Νo, I'VE EATEN") -"Πότε έφαγες;" ("When DID you eat?") "-Έφαγα πριν από μία ώρα" ("I ATE an hour ago").
I learned English 7 years ago and I was taught the same thing.
Excellent video. I thought I would point out about the "followed" issue in American English. It's a new form of the verb that is more akin to pressing a button rather than the genuine form of the verb. So I would say "I followed him on Twitter" (clicked the follow button) but in real life I would say "I've become a follower of Jesus". It's similar with the word friend. Online we'd say "I friended you" (clicked the friend button) but in real life we'd say "we became friends" or less common "we've become friends"
you can also follow someone in real life, altho I don't recommend it for legal reasons...
This video has gotten me questioning everything. I'm Irish, in my 50s. For me 'gotten' has always been part of my vocabulary. But what if it wasn't a word commonly used when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s? I have no real way to tell if it was or wasn't. Back then Irish television was mostly limited to two channels, with a lot of American content. I was a bookish boy (and still am) and read a lot of American authors. Having watched your video I now reluctantly come to the tentative conclusion that it was this cultural cross-pollination that added 'gotten' to my vocabulary. Added to this I haven't lived in an English-speaking country in the past 35 years. I see my English as something of a time capsule, though obviously books and audio-visual content have continued to exert an influence of my idiolect. Anyway, thoughts suitably provoked. I have certainly 'gotten' a lot more than I bargained for from watching this video.
I noticed how at 5:58 to show off Brits using gotten, you used some videos in order to display this, but something to have in mind is that a lot of TH-cam videos are very thoroughly international productions. It could've very well been written by an American or Canadian, or even a non-native English speaker who learned American English first, and only spoken by a Brit. Might be interesting to see how this phenomenon relates to fully British productions.
Even when the speaker wrote the the script themselves you’re seeing people like Tom Scott that spend a lot of time engaging with Americans online. This close interaction does have an effect on the speech.
target audience could be American too.
@@niallrussell7184 This is pretty much irrelevant. I don't see an American audience suddenly losing the ability to understand English when written and presented by an Briton or vice versa for that matter. It has never been an issue before.
@@egbront1506 The issue isn't that American's can't understand British English, but that the speaker may be "othered", or alienated by the English.
Yes, I've found that British TH-camrs will pander to American viewers, as they are seen as the largest audience. Thus, release times for videos, inclusion of American terms (or explanations of British terms) or even the outright substitution of British terms with American ones has occurred.
I've noticed the social media "followed you" also being confusing when translated to Swedish. Twitter used to show it as "följdes av" which means "was followed by", an error from word for word translation of "followed by". It kept confusing me, interesting to see why! (The new phrase is "följs av" which means something like "is followed by").
7:02 I would suggest that including the words “just,” “already,” and “yet” would already imply that what you did is relevant to the present so it might seem superfluous to us to conjugate it in the “have” form.
Wow truly a fascinating subject. From an ESL teaching perspective (and as an American😅) , I think the got-gotten distinction is natural and decreases ambiguity which is always* a good thing imo.
I've very much appreciated your videos I have benefited from them immensely, especially your Vowel video. And that has helped me teach my students better
As an American (Minnesota) I see and use “gotten” to indicate that the status of something has changed (“it’s gotten a lot hotter outside”) and “got” as an indication of purchase or ownership (“I got this book online”)
Notice that you wrote a preceding contraction of It HAS.
I pity the poor Minnesotan whose tongue has been twisted, brains blenderized, by competing Nordic, German, and Irish.
The peculiar accent was blessedly disappearing concomitant with the advent of television and MTV, but rose again in some dark night of Corona Virus, like Dra-cool-ah, mentioned above, biting and bloodletting all known language which latter gasped and sank, perhaps for the final time into the frozen abyss.
@@briseboyTV is not affecting accents... That's a myth. Accents and dialects are to a large degree generational and basically have always been subject to historical change, going back centuries.
@@ryanjacobson2508 What do you think historical change _is,_ if not a differing set of cultural exposures from one generation to the next?
I use it the same way kinda. But it's more of what suits me at the moment lol
@@briseboyDra-cool-a is actually closer to the Romanian pronunciation
Your videos are so consistently good , I especially like that you have a lot of example clips of speakers
This is very interesting. As an American who is probably around your age (? just guessing), I was always taught that using "gotten" was "proper" and using "got" in that context was basically "uneducated" and "wrong." I had no idea that in British English it as perfectly fine. Now I also have a better understanding of why I have heard so many British people say things like "I was sat here" which sounds wrong to an American.
Interesting. As a Brit, its the reverse for me. Gotten sounds informal and improper. Instering also that AOL choose to go with 'You've got mail'. Would that be for formality, instead of the american 'You've gotten mail'?
@@sdtfoxon We wouldn't say "You've gotten mail" because it implies we've already received it in the past. "You've got mail" means there's mail (in this case, email) waiting to be received and read. We might say "gotten" in a longer sentence such as, "You've gotten mail here at work for the last three months".
@@sdtfoxon In American English "You've got mail" is an informal way of saying "You have mail" whereas "You've gotten mail" would be an informal way of saying "You have received mail"
I'm in my 20s and that's also what I was taught.
I lived in the UK for 9 years. "Was sat" and "was stood' is also considered pig ignorant by my late British husband and his Oxbridge educated friends. I asked specifically.
As a American who listened to British TH-camrs growing up, I’ve used “ages” for a very long time (for ages you might say 😉) and it’s pretty common among a lot of my peers who also watched the same content growing up, while it’s very uncommon for anyone older than me to use the phrase. So it can definitely go both ways!
Lol that fact you use "content" though God I hate that word
I first heard “for the longest time” in a Billy Joel song, and I didn’t get it right away, that it meant “for ages” - seems a bit pleonastic.
How about the use of the simple past in conditional sentences for past hypothesis where most Brits (and non-natives like myself who've been studying the grammar for decades) use the past perfect? I've noticed many Americans say "I didn't see her yesterday, that's why I didn't tell her. If I SAW her yesterday, I would've told her", where I would say "If I HAD SEEN her...". Is this filtering into British English? I'm guessing not but I'd like to know what you think.
I'm American, but I prefer to use present perfect rather than simple past because it's more descriptive and precise.
Me, too - American also.
6:00 for the record, some of these people are reading scripts (e.g. the ubiquitous Simon Whistler) written by Americans or atleast non-British speakers.
the "ubiquitous" Simon Whistler hahahah
Great and educative video. Thanks for pointing these out
Another common phrase I hear fellow Brits using nowadays that sounds American to my old ears is "to be excited for + noun" or "to be excited to + verb" eg "are you excited for the concert?' or 'I'm excited to go to the concert.' In my day, it was always 'to be excited about' or just 'to look forward to'.
Based off of is gaining ground as well despite its illogic.
"flavorful" (sic), "I am (verb) ing it"and "could care less" are some of my pet peeves. That's why I love David Mitchell's "soapbox" video (at TH-cam) called something like "A message to Americans... Couldn't care less.."
@@egbront1506 I’m personally okay with using “off of” when it’s the opposite of “onto”, but “based off of” sounds clumsy. It was definitely taught in school to never use “off of”.
@@primalconvoy What's wrong with flavorful? Probably not a word I would use myself, but it doesn't strike me as _incorrect_.
Also not sure what you're referring to with "I am (verb)ing it," but "could care less" definitely annoys me too.
@@nickpatella1525 It's the illogic that gets to me. A base, by definition, sits at the bottom and you build ON it. You really have no other direction to go.
The opposite is off and I don't know what purpose that dangling "of" is serving when some people say "off of". I could just about understand "off from", even though that is a tautology.
This topic reminded me of something I noticed with my toddler nephews - before going to school they had a noticeable American twang in their accent (they both born and grew up in UK), we suspected form watching youtube and american cartoons. This was also during covid so very little interaction outside of the tv screen. Now they are both in primary school they are losing much of the American twang and picking more Welsh accent aspects (they are in Wales - they haven't just picked up a different random accent!). Just wondering is this something widespread, even researched - or is it just they were spending too much time watching Paw Patrol!
You create great content! Thank you so much.
This is exactly the kind of video where I would like additional information about Canadian English. I'm a native English speaker and I honestly can't think of which one I use. "Gotten" doesn't sound wrong but I can't recall ever using it. Adding the knowledge and data from the literal in-between language could help explain how or why this trend is working. Any other Canadians have a distinct preference for "got" versus "gotten"?
I commented above because I grew up in Alberta after being originally from the UK and then went back to the UK later in life. I never used gotten (which may have also been because I was aware of it being an American word and I had a strong connection with my homeland), but I definitely did not use the present perfect so much, which he alludes to here as well. I know because I was teaching English as a second language (in Poland with British books), the book had the present perfect, and I was definitely having difficulties using it naturally to give examples to the class. I think I eventually told them we did not use it so much in North American English. I have probably gone back more to it now as it has been over 25 years since I left Canada.
Something I noticed when going back into Higher Education and being with students 10 years younger is the dropping of the -ly suffix in adverbs. I would say something like “I guessed wrongly on a question” and they would say “I guessed wrong on a question”. I don’t know where that comes from
That sounds familiar, yeah. As an American, I recall hearing British people say things like "If I remember rightly..." which sounds kind of funny and antiquated to my ear, where I'd say "If I remember right" (though 'correctly' would be more common and preserves the -ly)
I think it's because there's not a a lot of grammar taught anymore - the difference between adverbs and adjectives
Germanisation ;) no, very likely that's not where it comes from at all. But in German adjectives and adverbs are the same, i.e. (the ending of) the word doesn't change when you're describing a verb instead of a noun.
My Android tablet sometimes says "your tablet is running slow", which I find very grating. I'd assumed it was just inappropriate informality for the context (though I doubt I'd ever say that, even in a casual conversation. Things may be slow, but they run slowly, at least for me). Would "running slow" be acceptable in American English?
@@dingo137 Something about that sounds a it wrong to my ears. It feels like it should be "your tablet is running slowly". Or "Currently, your tablet is running slow".
You have just gotten a new subscriber. This is honestly so fascinating.
Hey Dr Lindsey,
I’m Australian and I was wondering if you could do a video on the Australian accent, in respect to its distinguishing traits and origins in southern British dialects. The reason I ask is that I have encountered southern English speakers who seemed to pass as Australian to my ears or at least come extremely close to passing. I have also encountered many Australians, including myself who can imitate lower class British accents quite decently, but really struggle at anything else.
Thanks!
There seems to be some sort of connection. I'm German but spent most of my childhood in Perth, WA. When attending university, the linguistic professor, a South African, asked me if I were from the south of England because of my accent. Even later when visiting the UK with my English classes native speakers thought my accent was southern English.
Some New Englanders can be hard to distinguish from Australians when saying certain sentences
Fascinating to me is that as a Jamaican speaker whose English is entirely based on school and the media I consume, I didn't even notice these differences. I've used both gotten and got as past participle and it never once crossed my mind that they aren't just interchangeable. I think I do side with the Brits on the past tense vs present perfect thing however there is no form of oddity hearing "I just ate" even if I'd tend not to produce that as an English sentence
I learned (American) English as a second language mainly from youtube and always wondered why, in my (British) English classes in school, the only thing I had trouble with was distinguishing the present perfect and the simple past. This video explains a lot
I'd be really interested in how Australian English has been changing alongside both the Americanisation of English, and the fact we descended from British English and have made our own evolutions of it.
I prefer to use something of a hybrid of UK and US English. Mostly British English but dropping some of the fanciful spellings and words like catalogue and whilst. I almost never use "got" though, as I find there is almost always a shorter and less ambiguous way to phrase sentences that would otherwise contain it. For example "have got" is almost always redundant and can just be "have".
There is a whole 'nother topic on how "Southern" dialect has changed due to television and that American regional dialects have almost gone away with television. What you hear today in regional dialect is nothing compared to what it was just 50 years ago. So it is affecting us all in some way or another.
That's a widely held belief, but I've been persuaded by counterarguments that those changes would have happened no matter what because of migration and social, cultural and educational changes. There are still plenty of distinct accents out there, even though some have faded.
AAVE certainly is as strong as ever, and I notice it among the highly educated Black colleagues I worked with in a major library system where accents range from strong to sounding like me (I'm white), and many colleagues using "libary" and "aksed."
As a kid there were things I saw and heard on TV that were different from what I knew, like fashion and specific terms. They went into a place in my head as "what TV people are like." I thought soda was a special TV word for pop. And when I lived on NYC and DC, I was one of many people surprised to learn that, yes, I have a (very soft) regional accent, and that some of my vocabulary is hometown specific, like "treelawn" or "devil's strip," the grass between the sidewalk and the street.
@@McPierogiPazza AAVE is a made up language. It is not a dialect. Blacks have been doing this for so long, they just think it is their dialect. When in fact, they can speak English just like a first generation American can speak it.
@@nicholasvinen in Yorkshire we take out the word "the" a lot and just have a glottal stop... "the" adds no information and has become vestigial in Yorkshire dialect.
eg: "do you want to go t' pub?"
Foreigner here.
First of all, this all is genuenly very fascinating to listen to, thank you for the video.
Secondly, as a bit of personal context, I was taught by a teacher who was teaching me almost strictly British English, but since then the Internet left its huge mark on my vocabulary and grammar and speaking habits so just like those young Brits you mentioned, I'm pretty much an amalgamation of "British base" and "American paintjob" on top.
With that out of tht way, In my opinion 'gotten' may be better to adopt while keeping past participle for the very reason you've mentioned -- decreasing ambiguity.
Not that my opinion matters much or have the power to influence anybody, but TH-cam lets one vioce their opnions so that's what I'm gonna do. :D
When I was a lad in school (in Tasmania, Australia) in the late ’60s and early ’70s, teachers deplored my using “gotten” on the grounds that it wasn’t proper English but an Americanism or archaic; I continued (and still continue) using “gotten”, when appropriate, on the grounds that (a) the word was good enough for the translators of the KJV (b) good enough for Shakespeare and (c) the related words “forgotten” and “begotten” were good enough to be the past participles of “forget” and “beget”.
When people use “I have got” just to mean “I now possess” I maintain that “I have” would be sufficient.
It struck me how you said "Santa" instead of "Father Christmas" at the end.