Idiosyncratic British Usage

[Bruin Fisher]

There's a word used Stateside that is never, ever, used on this side of the pond: gotten. We just say got.

So an American might say "I've gotten my Covid vaccination." Unless, of course, you're the other kind of American...

However there's another word which is similar, but the usage is different: forgotten.

In British usage, we say "I forgot to get my vaccination" but "I have forgotten when I had my vaccination". Never "I have forgot when..."

How does that compare with US usage? I ask because I'm reading a book set in the England of 1948, by a US author. It's brilliantly written, she doesn't put a foot wrong with British usage - until I came across this: ..."as if he might have otherwise forgot how he lost his  father." In British English that should have been 'forgotten' and I rather think in US English too. I wonder if the author is aware of the British got/gotten and assumed the same would apply to forgot/forgotten.

[Cole Parker]

That sounds to me like she was using the subjunctive.  I don't know what the subjunctive usage should be for the verb 'forget'.  The internet wasn't much help, either.  I too find 'forgotten' in that usage to sound better.  Even if it is the subjunctive.

 

I should mention that 'gotten' now shows up in most lists showing how to conjugate the verb 'get' as this: got/gotten.  I take that to mean either works as well as the other.  I wonder if that's true in list compiled by strictly British lexicologists.

 

 

[James K]

17 hours ago, Bruin Fisher said:

There's a word used Stateside that is never, ever, used on this side of the pond: gotten. We just say got.

I don't believe that statement is correct. In British English, we say: things have gotten better with the vaccinations, we don't say: things have got better with the vaccinations.  The latter expression sounds wrong. Although you could avoid the debate altogether by saying, things have improved. 

Collins English Dictionary.

Examples of 'have gotten' in a sentence

Though 'things have gotten better, better isn't good enough'.

Times, Sunday Times (2007)

The best thing you can say is that the wars have gotten smaller.

Times, Sunday Times (2010)

Try replacing "gotten" with "got" in those two sentences, sounds wrong, I think? Of course, you could use "become."

 

[Bruin Fisher]

James, now you're educating me. Thanks for this. Perhaps US usage is creeping into British usage over the word gotten. That's a known phenomenon.

I did a little research:

This from Grammarly:

• People in the United States and Canada use gotten for the past participle of got in most cases.
• People in English-speaking countries outside of the United States and Canada usually use got.

Also this: Both got and gotten existed as far back as Middle English. English speakers in North America preserved gotten as the past participle of got. Outside of North America, the shortened version became standard.

This from Lexico (Oxford English Dictionary): As past participles of get, got and gotten both date back to Middle English. The form gotten is not used in British English but is very common in North American English. In North American English, got and gotten are not identical in use. Gotten usually implies the process of obtaining something, as in he had gotten us tickets for the show, while got implies the state of possession or ownership, as in I haven't got any money

This from Grammarist:

In American and Canadian English, the past participle of the verb get is usually gotten. For example, we might say, “I have gotten behind on my work,” or, “The book was not gotten easily.” Got is the participle in some uses, though, such as where has got to or have got to means must (e.g., “We have got to go to the store.”) and where has got or have got means has or have (e.g., “I have got five sisters.”)  

In the main varieties of English from outside North America, the past participle of get in all its senses is usually got. Gotten appears occasionally, and it is standard in a few set phrases such as ill-gotten gains, but the shorter form prevails by a large margin.

Definition from Collins English Dictionary:

gotten

(gɒtən )

Gotten is the past participle of get1 in American English.

See also ill-gotten gains

I concede that we DO use gotten in British English, in a few very specific set phrases, the only one I can think of is the one cited by Grammarist above: ill-gotten gains.

[Merkin]

Perhaps we Yanks should set test questions using 'get-got-gotten' when trying to unmask British spies amongst us.

[Bruin Fisher]

6 hours ago, Merkin said:

Perhaps we Yanks should set test questions using 'get-got-gotten' when trying to unmask British spies amongst us.

😅

[Camy]

15 hours ago, James K said:

In British English, we say: things have gotten better with the vaccinations, we don't say: things have got better with the vaccinations.

Not in my universe.

[Nigel Gordon]

I suspect that in Britain the use of get/got/gotten is something of a North/South issue. In my youth I heard gotten all the time but it seems to have got used less in recent years. One thing I have noticed is that it is used more in the North of England than in the South of England. 

[Cole Parker]

Here are several terms/words that I found reading a news article in major Australian newspaper that are perhaps germane to this topic.  I would guess they'd be generally known to people in the UK, and not familiar to Americans.

1) spruik it  2) went to the cricket  3)  cut-through  4) cack-handed  5) backing in  6) motherhood statement

To explain number two, no one here would say they went to the baseball.  The English seem to have a strange relationship with the article 'the'.  The drop it when speaking of hospitals, and add it when speaking of cricket.  And number 4 has nothing to do with parking a car, or as some put it, parking up; it was used in the article discussing beach communities.

[Bruin Fisher]

2 minutes ago, Cole Parker said:

1) spruik it  2) went to the cricket  3)  cut-through  4) cack-handed  5) backing in  6) motherhood statement

 

Well, Cole, some of these are just Ozzie weirdness. I've never heard of No.1. But 'went to the cricket' is perfectly normal to us, short for 'went to (watch) the cricket (match).

Cack-handed is, I think, a Northern term and is rather derogatory, originally referring to left-handed people, and by derivation to clumsy people. Cack is muck, dirt, possibly even shit. Cack-handed is someone who can't do something neatly, cleanly, and makes a mess of things. Cruel to identify left-handers that way, I think.

Backing in is also perfectly normal - reversing (going backwards) in(to a parking space).

I have no idea what a 'motherhood statement' might be.

On a visit to Australia I was puzzled to find an aisle in the supermarket labelled 'Manchester' - which is a town in the North of England. It turns out that cotton and linen goods, sheets, towels etc., were originally exported to Australia from Manchester in the UK and they still describe bedlinen as 'Manchester goods'. Like I said, weird.

 

[Cole Parker]

Bruin:

This was the usage of 'backing in' that made no sense to me.  As you can see, it has nothing to do with reversing a car:

And the politics? The repeated emphasis was on "backing in reef communities", protecting 64,000 tourism jobs, helping with COVID recovery, at a time when several electorates close to the reef are under threat. 

C

 

[Nigel Gordon]

42 minutes ago, Bruin Fisher said:

Cack-handed is, I think, a Northern term and is rather derogatory, originally referring to left-handed people, and by derivation to clumsy people. Cack is muck, dirt, possibly even shit. Cack-handed is someone who can't do something neatly, cleanly, and makes a mess of things. Cruel to identify left-handers that way, I think.

Bruin, cack is either old English or Anglo-Saxon for shit, I can't remember which. Historically, you were supposed to use your left hand to clean yourself after defecting. This was because you ate with your right hand. Remember forks had not come in yet so you used your fingers. Therefore, the left hand was the cack hand.

[Bruin Fisher]

19 minutes ago, Cole Parker said:

Bruin:

This was the usage of 'backing in' that made no sense to me.  As you can see, it has nothing to do with reversing a car:

And the politics? The repeated emphasis was on "backing in reef communities", protecting 64,000 tourism jobs, helping with COVID recovery, at a time when several electorates close to the reef are under threat. 

C

 

Hmm. You and me both. The meaning of that sentence is opaque to me.

[Bruin Fisher]

12 minutes ago, Nigel Gordon said:

Bruin, cack is either old English or Anglo-Saxon for shit, I can't remember which. Historically, you were supposed to use your left hand to clean yourself after defecting. This was because you ate with your right hand. Remember forks had not come in yet so you used your fingers. Therefore, the left hand was the cack hand.

That's interesting, a German speaking family I knew used to warn their toddlers away from anything dirty by saying 'Cacka'. Perhaps a common Saxon derivation...

[Bruin Fisher]

From Collins English Dictionary:

cack-handed in British English

(ˌkækˈhændɪd )

adjective informal

1. 

left-handed

2. 

clumsy

 

Word origin

from dialect cack excrement, from the fact that clumsy people usually make a mess; via Middle Low German or Middle Dutch from Latin cacāre to defecate

[Bruin Fisher]

34 minutes ago, Cole Parker said:

Bruin:

This was the usage of 'backing in' that made no sense to me.  As you can see, it has nothing to do with reversing a car:

And the politics? The repeated emphasis was on "backing in reef communities", protecting 64,000 tourism jobs, helping with COVID recovery, at a time when several electorates close to the reef are under threat. 

C

 

Since it's about politics, is the writer awkwardly talking about backing, in other words political support, among reef communities? That's the only way I can make any sense of this sentence.

I suspect any Ozzies reading this thread are rolling about laughing. No doubt it's crystal clear to them!

[James K]

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[Rutabaga]

A more clear-cut example is "quieten" which I see regularly in British writing but is not in general use in North America.  Here we would never say that a class of students "quietened" or that the teacher "quietened them down"; rather they would have "quieted" or been "quieted down."  

R

[Nigel Gordon]

35 minutes ago, Rutabaga said:

A more clear-cut example is "quieten" which I see regularly in British writing but is not in general use in North America.  Here we would never say that a class of students "quietened" or that the teacher "quietened them down"; rather they would have "quieted" or been "quieted down."  

R

I think we would use silenced rather than quieted. Quietened implies a process by which the volume of sound is reduced over a period of time. Quieted to us implies an immediate cessation of sound, so we would say silenced.

"He entered the room and the sound quieted, a death like silence pervaded the room."

 

[James K]

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[Bruin Fisher]

English is a mongrel language, it must be perplexing for foreigners to learn.

[Cole Parker]

On 2/5/2022 at 4:32 AM, James K said:

Doesn't it depend on the context? If you were in a group discussing sport, say at high school as an example: 

"Did you see what happened during the football match?"

"No, we went to the baseball."

No need to repeat, "match," or perhaps you would?

 

I get your point, but you're not correct.  Using your sentence, Americans would say, "No, we went the baseball game."  Never 'the baseball.'  That sounds so, so strange.  It's the same with basketball.  Never 'the basketball' always 'the basketball game.'  I guess it could be constructed to work your way.  How about, "We went to two games that day, the basketball and baseball."  But even there, 'games' would be tacked on at the end.  But 'the basketball' could actually be used that way.

C

[Rutabaga]

Has anyone brought up the difference in treatment of (what I believe are called) collective nouns?

U.S.:  The board is of the view that stores should remain closed until next week.

British:  The board are of the view that stores should remain closed until next week.

There are plausible arguments for either version.  It is just another example of George Bernard Shaw's remark that the US and Great Britain are two countries divided by a common language.

R

 

[Camy]

Have a gander at this:

https://thoughtcatalog.com/nico-lang/2013/09/71-simple-british-slang-phrases-everyone-should-start-using/

Also:

[Cole Parker]

I've read all the Dick Francis books, most of them several times.  He has one were the incomprehensibility of Cockney rhyming slang is a major complication in the solving of the murder.  I can't imagine people actually talk like that but realize they must.

 

C