The word "gotten", is it taught in schools?

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vctrmldrw@reddit

I think you might be confused about two things. The first is the idea that schools 'teach' words. It would be a very long and boring class that goes through the dictionary and teaches each word to a room full of children. People learn words by existing. Second is the idea that English is a prescriptive language with a defined set of correct words that cannot be transgressed. It isn't French. There is no Academé telling us how we may or may not speak. If people regularly use the word 'gotten' as the past participal of 'get', then that is the past participal of 'get'.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Not quite true though is it? Schools teach you how to write in Standard English. If you wrote "he ain't done nowt wrong" in an essay or assignment, you'd be corrected. You can't just write "the Tudors were on some next level colonial ting". Schools don't just passively observe how language has changed and allow any old construction in any setting. It's perfectly reasonable to ask whether "gotten" is permitted in Standard English taught in schools.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

>Schools teach you how to write in Standard English Ok, so define that beast. And then show that every English teacher subscribes to exactly the same standard...

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Norman_debris@reddit

Standard British English is quite easily defined and is what you were taught to write in if you went to school in the UK.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

Language exists in people, and people each have an idiolect. A teacher teaching in e.g. east London is unlikely to use/allow the use of exactly the same English as a teacher in West Yorkshire or Newcastle.

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Norman_debris@reddit

I'd say London and Yorkshire teachers probably mark essays to remarkably similar, almost indistinguishable criteria. Formal writing is fairly standardised.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

Ok. But 'standards' are found in books. Teachers do not consult grammar manuals every time they mark an essay, they consult their internal grammar.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Are you disputing that Standard English exists? I haven't just invented that term. Of course there's no official manual of English. But teachers do indeed mark to standardised language rules. No one in school is getting away with writing "I done" instead of "I did" because it satisfies the teacher's "internal grammar".

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Money-Knowledge-3248@reddit

>Are you disputing that Standard English exists? Standard English doesn't exist in the form you are maybe thinking of. In much the same way as English doesn't exist just forms of English. There are forms of English which are standardised and used as 'correct' formal English. There are 'correct' forms of British English, Scottish English, American English, Australian English et al. But Standard English (used as shorthand for formal British English) is not English (meaning British English in it's standard/formal and non-standard/informal forms). Standard English is a subset of English and is considered a formal version of it. What is being taught in schools is formal English but I have found a [BBC Bitesize article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zp9jkty) which defines formal and non-formal English so children today maybe being taught the differences. >Of course there's no official manual of English. But teachers do indeed mark to standardised language rules. There is no 'official' manual of English but to standardise English language education in schools there must be a gov't manual which details what formal English is considered to be otherwise English language education would have variance between teachers and schools. In much the same way newspapers have style guides to standardise writing across the publication.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

I'm not, not exactly. But [people do.](https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2020/02/24/no-such-thing-as-standard-english/)At the same time, it does feel a little fraudulent at times. And obviously there are mistakes which every English teacher will (should) correct. But there are going to be grey areas too.

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

Why on earth would every teacher need to subscribe to *exactly* the same standard? Standard English is simply the prevailing variety of English as used in this country across its users. That individual users might have variance is totally irrelevant to the existence of an overall standard. If there *weren't* some sort of standard then you and I would not be able to converse here now in English.

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Kaiisim@reddit

That's different, that's teaching formal writing language.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Different to what? OP asked if "gotten" would be corrected if used in an essay.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

Like v many other things, it's going to come down to the judgement of the individual teacher. I wouldn't correct it; it's standard in the US, and I tell my youth that they are free to use British or American spellings/vocab (I teach ESOL).

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7ootles@reddit

>I tell my youth that they are free to use British or American spellings/vocab (I teach ESOL) If you're teaching British English, you're not teaching American English. Shit or get off the pot. There's a difference between teaching correct British orthography and teaching a prestige dialect. Also, "judgment" only has one E in it, you philistine.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

That's one opinion. Not one I subscribe to.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Good for you. But the question is clearly about how English is taught in UK schools, where pupils certainly aren't told they can use either UK or US spelling/vocab.

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7ootles@reddit

Different in that the use of "gotten" is a valid English word which has mostly fallen out of use, rather a nonstandard grammatical form which only exists in some local dialects.

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Norman_debris@reddit

But it is non-standard as far as Standard British English goes.

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7ootles@reddit

Can you show me the standard by which it would be judged as nonstandard?

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Norman_debris@reddit

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/gotten "American and archaic or regional British" Not that Wiktionary is the bible of language use, but it's a fairly reliable indicator of whether a word is considered standard or not.

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7ootles@reddit

You realize I could edit the page to say its first usage was to describe the "goat-hen", a mythical creature that you get when you hatch a chicken's egg under a pile of goat droppings, right? You might as well be saying "well this guy at the pub told me".

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Norman_debris@reddit

Sigh. If you're happy to continue pretending there's no such thing as Standard British English, then fair enough. There's not a lot I can do.

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7ootles@reddit

Of course there's a standard dialect. What I'm saying is that your appeal to authority is nonsense, as there is no authority. There's no BS or ISO standard for language use, no academy or college which sets a formal standard. It's all *de facto*.

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

There’s no appeal to authority in their argument. You’ve made this up.

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7ootles@reddit

...did you miss the part where he held up Wiktionary to back himself up...?

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

Any British dictionary notes that it is North American or US English.

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RisqueIV@reddit

It's also the standard past-participle for 'get' in American English, and that's why its use in the UK riles certain types.

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Money-Knowledge-3248@reddit

Standard English is a variety of English which has been codified with standardised grammar rules. It is what would be taught in schools, used in publications and, probably, used for EFL teaching etc. However 'standard english' changes even within the UK (British English and RP with Standard UK English (UKSE) in England/Wales, 'Scottish English' in Scotland and 'Welsh English' in Wales; also including General American and General Australian). As others have said Standard English does not have an academy which is the ultimate authority on what is or isn't allowed within the language. It is Standard by consensus and if common usage changes enough then so will Standard English. In reality there is no such thing as 'Standard English' but variations of 'Standard English'. And one version of 'Standard English' is not superior to another version of 'Standard English'. So you can have a situation where what I learnt as 'Standard English' is now slightly different to what is being taught now. You could also have a situation where 'gotten' is accepted by one teacher in one school but not by another in another school. It is also why English language publications such as newspapers have style guides to 'standardise' writing in that particular publication. One publication may allow 'gotten' and another may not. As for gotten itself it appears to be archaic British English but more used in the USA. So it would be a case of a word travelling to another English language based culture, falling out of usage in the 'home' English language culture and then 'coming back' from the 'other' English language culture to the 'home' English language culture. Most information about Standard English can be read on the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_English)

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ApprehensiveElk80@reddit

There’s lots of words within Standard English that you wouldn’t write in essays though, but will come up in lessons to maybe help engage kids because it’s their lingo. I wouldn’t expect to read ‘The Great Fire of London plunged the city into an omnishambles’ but I might expect a teacher to say it in a lesson to describe the aftermath, as an example. Words aren’t specifically taught in schools, what they will do is teach you the right language choices for an essay/assignment however, and I doubt ‘gotten’ falls into that category.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Did you never have a spelling test? Of course words are taught in schools. No, you don't systematically go through thr dictionary, but I don't see how teaching reading and writing can't be considered "teaching words". OP asked if "gotten" would be corrected in an essay. Perfectly reasonable question.

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ApprehensiveElk80@reddit

Being taught to spell isn’t being taught words it’s being taught to put the correct letters in the correct order to spell the word. And spelling tests only cover a relatively small number of words as well. Plenty of us even know words that we can’t necessarily spell or have to regular check the spelling of.

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Norman_debris@reddit

This is tedious. People in the North West will say "I ett a pie" or "can you borrow me a pen" but schools will teach you that in Standard British English, you say "I ate" and "can you lend me..." It's utterly bizarre that people are pretending English isn't taught in schools.

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7ootles@reddit

>"I ett a pie" "Ett" is how we pronounce "ate". We spell it A-T-E. This pronunciation is also sometimes present in RP. Use of "borrow" vs "lend" isn't a feature of north-western dialects, it's idiocy, and it gives a lot of us the pip.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Heard borrow as lend all the time growing up in Blackpool, but I'll concede they weren't the best examples. The point is we all have our dialectal quirks but Standard English absolutely is taught in schools.

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7ootles@reddit

I also grew up round Blackpool, and every time I heard someone say "borrow" in that way, I heard someone else - a teacher, a parent, another kid - correct them.

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Norman_debris@reddit

That's my point!

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7ootles@reddit

Right. The fact that other people in/from the same area was correcting them indicates that it's not a feature of dialect but of not knowing the difference.

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Norman_debris@reddit

Well, no. What you just wrote is fine in Blackpool speech, but in school you'd be corrected to "...other people from the same area WERE..." My point is we have acceptable dialect features but are also taught how to write in Standard English.

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7ootles@reddit

Well, I agree with that. We were taught that the standard is the best way of making sure we all understand each other.

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

>It's utterly bizarre that people are pretending English isn't taught in schools. It's this really strange reddit phenomenon where people think that they're enlightened for understanding that there are no metaphysical rules for word use, that languages can change and dialects exist. And then they run with this and turn it into gibberish.

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

> Words aren’t specifically taught in schools Anyone with any memory of school at all, any understanding of the concept of teaching, or kids of their own, will surely know that this is total nonsense.

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ApprehensiveElk80@reddit

They aren’t taught in the sense OP is meaning. My kids have never come home and said ‘mum, we had word lessons today.’

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

>They aren’t taught in the sense OP is meaning. Yes, they *absolutely* are. Kids at a young age are explicitly taught about correct usage of certain past participles, and then beyond that, students are taught about word usage through the correcting of their written work. >My kids have never come home and said ‘mum, we had word lessons today.’ This is a straw man invented by the top comment, and has absolutely no relation to anything that the OP has said.

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ArtistEngineer@reddit

>Kids at a young age are explicitly taught about correct usage of certain past participles What about things like "was sat" and "was stood"? That seems to be growing, and I even hear people on the BBC use that irregular form.

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

I'm not sure what you're asking me? That teachers might be incorrect or that language may change or some words may be missed is unrelated to the fact that such things are indeed taught.

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ArtistEngineer@reddit

I was just curious if teachers made a distinction between common irregular grammar and uncommon ones.

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ApprehensiveElk80@reddit

Being taught how to use words, the grammar around it and what is appropriate language for different settings, which is what kids are taught at school, is slightly different to being sat down taught words in isolation which is what I feel OP was getting at. The building of one’s vocabulary comes from dynamic teaching whereby new language is introduced in context not as this idea of words as a singular entities - not least because the English language is constantly changing and incredibly dynamic.

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

You're just continuing the straw man! OP said absolutely nothing whatsoever about being sat down and taught words in isolation, and neither did I. You're inventing this. Children *categorically are* taught about past participle use *as part of everyday language* at a young age. Especially common ones such as *got*. This is inarguable. It is completely reasonable to ask whether they're taught the word *gotten* as being a correct form as part of this. Fussing over whether they're taught this in magical 'word lessons' that you've invented, or taught this explicitly as part of learning how to construct a sentence, or taught this during correction of written work, or taught this passively by listening to a teacher speak, is totally irrelevant to the question of whether it is taught. The concept of teaching covers a variety of activities.

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

> There’s lots of words within Standard English that you wouldn’t write in essays though, but will come up in lessons to maybe help engage kids because it’s their lingo. You’re arguing that using ‘gotten’ will help engage kids because it’s ‘their lingo’?

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KowakianDonkeyWizard@reddit

>If people regularly use the word 'gotten' as the past participal of 'get', then that is the past participal of 'get'. Absolutely correct, except for one thing - it's conventionally "past participle".

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

> The first is the idea that schools 'teach' words. Schools very much are in the business of correcting how children speak and write. That doesn’t mean going methodically through a dictionary as per your absurd example. But I would certainly expect a child writing ‘colour’ to be corrected to English spelling, for example. > Second is the idea that English is a prescriptive language with a defined set of correct words that cannot be transgressed. It isn't French. It’s not that simple. First, that isn’t how French works either. The Académie française has precious little influence over anything. Moreover, there is no such thing as ‘English’. Only Englishes. And we all use our language in *highly* prescriptive ways to show belonging to different sub-sections of society and to convey certain values.

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HundredHander@reddit

On 'colour', do you mean corrected to American spellling, if they're in America?

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

It’s meant to say color but I missed the autocorrect and editing on mobile since Reddit did away with compact mode is horrendous.

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cryptonuggets1@reddit

I got this.

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Scotto6UK@reddit

I've always diggened it.

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snapjokersmainframe@reddit

Diggety.

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cryptonuggets1@reddit

Get duggin

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

I'm sorry but this comment is just as confused. Schools absolutely *do* teach word usage; basic sentence composition at a young age and then specific terminology for specific domains later on. I have no idea how you think that they don't. Pointing out that teachers don't sit in front of students and reel off dictionary definitions is a terrible straw man. *Most* words are learned passively, certainly, but this doesn't mean that certain words and important features of the English language are not explicitly taught. Young children are most definitely taught, in schools, how to create and use past participles, and which ones are correct. Secondly, the prescriptivist versus descriptivist dichotomy is not a helpful one here at all, and regardless was preempted by OP so it's not clear to me why you think they're confused. Our entire language is governed by adherence to rules. Language is not possible without it. From a Wittgensteinian perspective, language *just is* rule following. That these rules are not set by any central body is completely irrelevant. That these rules can change is similarly irrelevant. That sometimes the rules can be transgressed and the same meaning retained also irrelevant. These rules nonetheless exist, and children do have to be taught how to follow them, both from actively being taught, and their own passive learning.

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GroundbreakingBuy187@reddit

Other going to depend on the context its used ,as that makes the language , more digestible. I'm rubbish at grammar. But I'd notice if someone used gotten As in I Gotten my coat on . .compared against, the phrase you yourself posted , I'll gotten gains. Then yes if not used and sounding correct in a sentence. They possibly would mark as incorrect. I struggled to even think of an other way to use gotten.

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greg225@reddit

> But I'd notice if someone used gotten > As in I Gotten my coat on 'I gotten my coat' doesn't make sense, but what about 'I had gotten my coat'? Gotten only really works in very specific tenses, it's not a straight substitute for 'got'. Imagine that you're telling your friend about something that happened yesterday: "I'd just gotten my coat on when the phone rang". You're talking about events that happened in the past, from the perspective of the present. While 'got' also works in that particular context, 'gotten' only really works that way. It needs 'had' before it to really make sense. In the phrase 'ill-gotten gains', the 'gains' were received in the past, and we're talking about them in the present. Additionally, gotten used here is a passive verb, meaning it describes the 'gains' themselves. Gains that were obtained through nefarious means - it doesn't say anything about who obtained them.

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UnavoidablyHuman@reddit

As an Aussie I'd say it's a regular word in my vernacular. Thinking of some examples it seems like we often use it in place of "been" or "become" but it feels like it has a different vibe that I can't explain. E.g.: -I'd never gotten robbed before - It had gotten so bad I couldn't believe it - The bee had gotten out of the cage

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EconomicsFit2377@reddit

I'd never been robbed before It got so bad I couldn't believe it The bee got out of the cage I never got over it

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EconomicsFit2377@reddit

I'd never been robbed before It got so bad I couldn't believe it The bee got out of the cage I never got over it

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RickJLeanPaw@reddit

How regularly, and to what end, do you cage bees?

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UnavoidablyHuman@reddit

I happened to be trying to evacuate a large bumblebee from my office as I was coming up with the example. Bees in this country are enormous compared to back home. I personally don't partake in the caging of the bees if that puts you at ease

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GroundbreakingBuy187@reddit

😂 love the humour ,love it 😂 There's one person I admire for humour and precise Word choice , Catherine tate , red nose day appeal . https://youtu.be/WxB1gB6K-2A?si=o-KVyBufSLRZz_Sa

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GroundbreakingBuy187@reddit

I'm shocked ,you keep bees in cages ?!?! How so they gotten out ,through them bars, not so narrow as to keep a gnat at bay. I never often get to use the word , as such ,or I may have used and totally ,forgotten. P.s. not a play on words , my memory, is well ,, shot.

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Threatening-Silence@reddit

*I'd just gotten my coat on, when...

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GroundbreakingBuy187@reddit

Thanks ,it's more an age thing for me , recalling , I'm knocking on towards 60 ..... Times change , tech changes, dialects change, trends die and cone back . When civilisation realises ,things need to be variable ,we'll, realise ,that a life of variety ,is best than ,same old same old.

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lunarpx@reddit

Absolutely not. 'Standard English' is specifically taught in Primary (See the National Curriculum, it occurs numerous times https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a81a9abe5274a2e8ab55319/PRIMARY\_national\_curriculum.pdf). An example SATS question might ask a pupil to correct a sentence with 'gotten' in it. The only correct use might be with idioms as youve suggested, like 'ill gotten gains'. I support trainee teachers and would absolutely be setting this as a developmental target if they weren't using standard English.

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decentlyfair@reddit

Functional Skills Tutor enters the chat…….I absolutely stress to English and ESOL learners alike that the examiner would not accept American spellings in writing exams. I have never gotten a gotten in written work but if I did then I absolutely would mention it. It wouldn’t be considered Standard English therefore it would need addressing. Likewise using ! or contractions.

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Delicious-Cut-7911@reddit

It is more American to say gotten... You could probably trace it ack to Shakespear's time. Ill gotten gains... Words evolve and change. My English teacher loathed the word 'got'. He said it was pointless. I'm 68 and never wrote or learnt it in school and never say the word.

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sensorygardeneast@reddit

What a weird post. It's a regular everyday word and always has been.

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teedyay@reddit

Can I ask where you live, and (roughly) how old you are? I’m Gen X, living in the south. I didn’t hear anyone British say gotten until I heard Gen Z generation using it.

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sensorygardeneast@reddit

I'm from Bristol and have lived in the south west all my life. I'm 43 years old. Yeah, this is baffling. I swear the OP has just picked a random word and claimed no one used to say it.

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WaspsForDinner@reddit

44. I've lived in Lincolnshire and S. Yorkshire - don't think I've ever heard anyone British say it outside of specific contexts.

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sideone@reddit

The only person I know who says "gotten" also uses "pacific" for specific and "broked" instead of broken.

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teedyay@reddit

Huh. I lived my first 20 years in Somerset and don’t recall ever hearing it. We all said “got”.

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Depress0Express@reddit

It’s his turn to post the “stuff we’ve been saying since the 1300’s but have decided to blame on foreigners to make ourselves feel superior” post. It’s gotten today, passed away a week ago, pants the week before that. I bagsie Soccer for next week what with the footie and all that. Very topical.

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sensorygardeneast@reddit

I love how people say things like "Americanism", as if the global evolving of the English language is something evil that should be avoided. And let's face, British English is often considerably dumber-sounding than American English. See "toad in the hole", "bubble and squeak" etc. etc.

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DrederickTatumsBum@reddit

It’s an indicator that someone doesn’t have a great grasp of English to me. Same as saying lend instead of borrow.

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sideone@reddit

The only time you should say "gotten" is if you're describing "ill gotten gains". Also SW, similar age as you.

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terryjuicelawson@reddit

It won't be formally, and would be corrected in an English class I am sure, but as a piece of casual English it would slide by just fine.

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Exact-Put-6961@reddit

It has fallen out of use in British English but is a perfectly usable word. The US tends to use older English.

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7ootles@reddit

People often say about Americans using "older" English, as though it never occurred to them that they have simply continued evolving the language in their own direction. If you took a modern American back 400 years, they would make as little sense to a Colonist there as they would to us in England.

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Exact-Put-6961@reddit

The word gotten is a hang over in the US from earlier times. It has fallen out of use in UK. Gotten did not evolve in the US, it just stayed in use.

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GaryJM@reddit

If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for me. *Oxford, how haps it in this smooth discourse / you told not how Henry the Sixth hath lost / all that which Henry the Fifth had gotten?*

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

You’d be happy for your child to be brought up to spell like Shakespeare too? This argument is crazy. We don’t speak that kind of English any more.

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Depress0Express@reddit

Shakespeare is the bedrock of English Lit, he’s credited with the invention of 1700 words many of which are still used today. Are you going to argue we shouldn’t use fashionable or useful either?

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7ootles@reddit

This is bollocks. Shakespeare isn't the bedrock of anything; his work is a snapshot of popular entertainment four hundred years ago and nothing more. It's not the quality of his work which has preserved it, but its popularity. Writers use irregular constructions to produce new words all the time, and we also use rare or local words because we like the sound, or the specific nuance in certain words' meanings. It's entirely possible that Shakespeare did this in his work. It would be far more accurate to describe Thomas Cranmer (who compiled the original edition of the *Book of Common Prayer*) and Myles Coverdale (who produced the first commonly-used translation of the Bible into English) as "the bedrock of English literature", as those books were disseminated across all of England and were used regularly, contributing a lot of new phrases and word forms to everyday speech - but even that wouldn't be true. English literature is far more complicated than that.

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

He’s credited with the first attested use of a large number of words which is not quite the same thing. > Are you going to argue we shouldn’t use fashionable or useful either? Why would I argue that? You seem to have missed the point.

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Depress0Express@reddit

No the point is you seem to think we’ve stopped using gotten at some point and should be arbiters of its resurgence when if given enough time I’m sure we could find its use being utilised in British English all the way back to Shakespeare.

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Threatening-Silence@reddit

The word has a perfectly fine British heritage, you just don't like it.

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

It’s really not clear what you’re trying to argue. That because a word was once used it should be used forever more in exactly the same way?

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Threatening-Silence@reddit

It wasn't just "once used", it's still used today by millions of people. Again, you just don't like it. That's all this is about.

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

Anyway, if your point is that it’s just a word that is in use then there’s no need to bring Shakespeare into it.

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

I have absolutely no like or dislike for the word. Strange comment to make, especially to a stranger. In my speech community we don’t use it.

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

Wrote a post to reply to someone who then deleted theirs. Posting it here as it’s still relevant to an interesting discussion: It’s a common misconception that as languages evolve they only become more permissive and broader in scope. That’s not the case at all. Often words narrow in meaning and find their use restricted to more specific circumstances. That has happened with ‘gotten’. There’s a delicious irony here. It’s just a matter of fact that over time ‘gotten’ has come to be perceived as American, for one reason or another. That is usage in action. People like you are actually being prescriptivist. Think about it.

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Sht_Hawk@reddit

Thou art a very ragged wart

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GaryJM@reddit

Away, you mouldy rogue.

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PinkSudoku13@reddit

both, *got* and *gotten* are correct. They're past participle of the word *get* and perfectly acceptable to use. You may be confused by thinking that it's incorrect.

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EconomicsFit2377@reddit

>I got it . >I gotten it . >I have got it . >I have gotten it

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lunarpx@reddit

AFAIK, 'gotten' is correct in American English, but moved out of use in British English around 400 years ago.

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ArtistEngineer@reddit

it's used in Australian English so it was still there later than that.

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PinkSudoku13@reddit

> but moved out of use in British English around 400 years ago you keep saying that but that's just something you came up with in your head. Also, grammar is a living thing, it may have fallen out of favour in the UK and is now coming back. It's still not incorrect.

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lunarpx@reddit

https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/is-the-word-gotten-really-that-rotten/ Yes, language is socioculturally and historically constructed, and as a society - and within the education system - there's a broad consensus that 'gotten' isn't currently correct in standard English, though I'm sure this could well change in the future.

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Ambitious-Ad3131@reddit

Sorry, I’ve forgotten.

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comingdownblue@reddit

I'm generally just an advocate for getting people to realise language is fluid and will always change and that's not a bad thing, but the got/gotten thing specifically has always really confused me... To me they both have their own meanings in different contexts and aren't really interchangable, like "I've got a dog" (present tense) vs "I got a dog" (past tense but could also be present in some dialects) vs "I've gotten a dog" (past tense). When I first heard people see gotten as american I was really confused

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deathmetalbestmetal@reddit

ITT: Redditors fail spectacularly at 'knowing more about how language works' than OP.

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Albert_Herring@reddit

Back in my boomer day the teachers would complain about almost any use of the verb "get", however it might have been conjugated.

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Apprehensive_Win8653@reddit

I have gotten that text. Yeah what’s wrong?

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DickSpannerPI@reddit

Gotten is Middle English, just because it went through an American phase doesn't mean it has to be a pariah.

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BlackCat27_TS4@reddit

Americans use 'gotten' more than most English spoken languages, at least in my experience.

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Carrente@reddit

Yes, it is, it's been in English for centuries. And see also O Come All Ye Faithful with *begotten not created*

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Visible-Management63@reddit

That's a different word though, the past tense of the verb to beget, or to father offspring.

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BppnfvbanyOnxre@reddit

Language evolves and devolves.

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ButterscotchSure6589@reddit

We do use it in the expression, "ill gotten gains" so it must have been a thing at one time.

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CaptainPedge@reddit

There is no approved list of English language words

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spaceshipcommander@reddit

Who says "gotten" isn't correct? Much of language is contextual and nuanced. This is like the "my friend and I" argument. That's not always correct either. It depends on many things, including who the subject is.

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EvilRobotSteve@reddit

Stuff like this used to annoy me a lot, but I've come to accept that language evolves, and "proper" grammar and vocabulary is a moving target. For example, I used to hate (and if I'm honest, still do) when people used the word "literally" when they meant "figuratively" but it's become so commonplace it's now even the dictionary definition has been changed to include it. So if the dictionary can bend so much as to allow a word to be defined as one thing and also its \*literal\* opposite, then it's clear that "proper" English is whatever the majority of the population decide it is. So while I still find stuff like this sounds unpleasant and incorrect, I just ignore it completely now.

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BeardedBaldMan@reddit

It's going to depend on the school, teacher and student. If it's Jemima and she's set for top grades, then yes it's going to be corrected and a note sent to her parents. If it's Connor and the teacher is pleased that he's written a whole paragraph then it's going to be ignored.

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focalac@reddit

It’s not an Americanism.

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GroundbreakingBuy187@reddit

I write like that too (the now) fluff em ) but looking at context if gotten ,as in gotten better and become better , do sound correct ,even though not widely used . As in context they, both sound past tense as such .

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knight-under-stars@reddit

> It's going to depend on the school, teacher and student. And also the context of the written work. If the exercise is to write a formal letter as would be used in a business type setting then it may well be corrected. If the exercise is to write to your make believe penpal then its all good.

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focalac@reddit

Yeah, I use it. Just one of those words that fell out of favour a bit. It’s only really used in certain tenses like “if he hadn’t licked the handrail on the Underground, he wouldn’t have gotten ill.” “Got” in that tense sounds awkward. But, like anything else, I suppose it’s a matter of what you’re used to.

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Jaffiusjaffa@reddit

Technically I think it might even be the other way around: "Preference for “got” or “gotten” differs based on regions. In the United States and Canada, gotten is the preferred past participle form of the verb get. Got exists in all varieties as the simple past form. However, outside of North America, got is the preferred past participle of get."

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stuaxo@reddit

I've never heard anyone use it, and I'll stay in my confirmation bias bubble as long as possible, it sounds awful - kitchy and American.

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Ill_Refrigerator_593@reddit

It used to annoy me but i've gotten used to it.

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secretstothegravy@reddit

It makes my skin crawl

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BigRedTone@reddit

Gotten isn’t incorrect, it’s just horrible. It’s also not an American invention, we used to use it. I spent five years in an American company and my hatred for American English grew there, but it’s amazing how much of it is correct just yucky.

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quarky_uk@reddit

It is English. I think it went to the Americas with the settlers, died out a bit here, and then has "gotten" more popular due to US cultural influence in the past few decades. Definitely still has a weird sound to me though.

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