Has gotten

When asked which sayings, phrases, forms of locution bug them the most, British always have "gotten" on their list. It bugs them. A lot. Their past tense for "get" is "got." They view it as so wrong and it distracts them so greatly that it negatively shades everything else where they encountered it.

Knowing that now it sticks out for me too. It sounds clunky and wrong. But it's actually correct. Instapundit:

I understand that a member of the CEO’s personal staff has gotten in touch with my student Chris Davis, whose insurance troubles I blogged about yesterday ... 

Ugh. Past perfect again. Where plain past tense "got" will do just as well. Aren't we taught to always use the simplest forms?

Know what's weird? Spanish has two types of past tense. Verbs are conjugated two different ways for the type of action that began in the past and ended in the past, contrasted with the type of action that began in the past and could possibly still be going. The second type has a subjunctive quality to it for being open ended, and that allows for a type of humor depending on how you phrase something like, "We were married in 1990."

Yet they also have past perfect and pluperfect constructions the same as English with the helpers, "had" and "has had." This is how English achieves the same thing that Spanish has with two types of past tense conjugations. While Spanish has both ways. This is one of the more difficult things for English speakers to learn in Spanish. It comes near the end of the second year and by then across four semesters the packed classes have thinned out to just a few students, and the few students remaining have a bit of a struggle dealing with the distress of learning a whole new set of forms for all verbs just for that one little thing when their own language doesn't even have it.

The odd thing about "gotten" is that it's proper in the United States and in Canada but not outside North America.

It's seen as an American invention but it is not. It's part of older English and built into words such as "forgotten." It's fallen out of favor outside North America. Since they believe falsely that it's American then they also believe it's inferior. And that's what bugs them. Their wrong conclusion about its origin bugs them. American speech bugs them. But what really bugs them is its re-acceptance in their own lands. They resent American style intruding. Strongly.

British English is so f'k'd up it's not even funny, and the f ups codified, but all that's okay because it's all their own collective distortions over time, but Americans adhering to older forms sound bizarre to them and having it intrude back on their modern distortions is unacceptable because they think it's American invention.

While to Americans this complaint sounds fine when it's written, but when it's spoken the complaint sounds perfectly ridiculous, like baby-talk, because they're feeling it in their hots heyah, theyah, everywheh, noth, south, east and west.

Grammarist.com





I watch the Japanese channel NHK quite a lot when they're not running sumo or kabuki and you cannot help from noticing that a lot of Japanese television personalities speak English in British accent. They are very good speaking English, utterly fluent, but it's ruined by being British instead of American accent.

How posh.

Not.

And I mean ruined. It helps them avoid the rhotic phoneme that's not in their native language, so a more natural fit, and you can tell sometimes they learned English in Australia, not Britain, by all the vowels being pinched, smashed, stretched and mispronounced, and it does suit them better, but here are all those other codified distortions as well and I just can't even. *click* Get out!

Just. Shut. Up.

I'd honestly rather not hear anything. Sound off / closed caption on. Or else just move on through the channels.

And now the thing that bugs them the most has gotten to bug me as well.

I think this is what getting old does; it can turn you into a miserable little bitch if you're not already British.

You see, one set of grandparents left everything behind to get away from all that is British and start a new life in America where one at least has possibilities. So having it all brought back and intrude into my world is also unacceptable. In this way of picayune intolerance we're more alike than either of us would care to admit.