got

Yes, I agree with got and gotten is even worse. Beginning sentences with conjunctions and the infamous Oxford comma.

I’m not perfect though and find myself using got quite a lot!

Grammaretto

I still feel rebellious when beginning a sentence with And or But.

My 13 yr old DGS uses get and got all the time. It's what they say. It may hurt our ears but we are on the way out along with our language, sadly.

But surely we, on this forum, we're born to be rebels weren't we Grammareto?

The one thing we can definitely say is our Primary School teachers certainly made sure we didn't forget what they taught us!

May I hook on to this thread to add - gone - as in,
the price has gone up
or
the water level has gone down
as it is not only juvenile, but doesn’t make grammatical sense.
when risen and reduced would

Every time I listen to Neil Diamond's "Play Me" I cringe when he sings, "Songs she sang to me, Songs she brang to me."

This thread brings back memories of long-ago grammar lessons. The use of got, nice, nobody and ‘was what’ were all forbidden, along with many other rules I’ve now forgotten.

I think when clarity is required it’s important to be accurate but for everyday communication, it doesn’t matter so much. Though my teachers would be turning in their graves at the use of ‘Me and my friend went to…’ We were told it was the height of bad manners to put oneself before other people.

No No No a hundred time please NO

Grammatically correct language sounds stilted and just isn’t how most people speak, in fact was it ever?

I cant get myself worked up about anything pedant.

In 100 years
a. none of us will be here
b. the english langiage[and rules and spellings] will be all different again
c. there will still be people then saying, "it is all wrong. 50 years ago it was ..."

downnotout
As school children though we 'got' the message. Or should that be we 'received' the message.
There are times when got is better IMO.
E.g. Your sentence or He got his just desserts!

If I asked a year 1 ^What have you got in your hand? The answer would be quick.
If I asked What are you concealing in your hand? the answer would probably be “What?” I then have to say, “Don’t say what, say pardon”

Mollygo

downnotout
As school children though we 'got' the message. Or should that be we 'received' the message.
There are times when got is better IMO.
E.g. Your sentence or He got his just desserts!

If I asked a year 1 ^What have you got in your hand? The answer would be quick.
If I asked What are you concealing in your hand? the answer would probably be “What?” I then have to say, “Don’t say what, say pardon”

The last part of your post has reminded me of something from my primary school days, when I was about nine.
A member of staff came into our classroom and announced, "I have a job for someone" (or words to that effect - it might have been "I've got a job for someone 😁)
One of the boys said "What?", and was sharply corrected by our class teacher with "It is pardon, not 'what'".
It was quite clear to me that the poor boy had not wanted the question repeating, but had wanted to know what the job was!

You can see how angry I felt on the boy's behalf, given that it still bothers me nearly sixty years later.

Mollygo

downnotout
As school children though we 'got' the message. Or should that be we 'received' the message.
There are times when got is better IMO.
E.g. Your sentence or He got his just desserts!

If I asked a year 1 ^What have you got in your hand? The answer would be quick.
If I asked What are you concealing in your hand? the answer would probably be “What?” I then have to say, “Don’t say what, say pardon”

Ooh, ‘pardon’ was forbidden in our house! We were told to say, ‘What did you say?’ or even just, ‘What?’

I actually posted about still thinking of alternatives to ‘got’ 65 years after Miss Duffy forbade its use!
We were also chastised for saying things like, ‘ I ate my dinner’, as she would tell us we would hardly eat someone else’s dinner!

Also, AskAlices mention of ‘brang’ reminds me that I have heard some fellow Scots use ‘jamp’ as the past tense of ‘jump’.

I've got a lot on this week.
We got a great deal on the car.
That got my goat.
You've got guts.

Not seeing anything wrong here..anyone got better alternatives?!

I would like to think that most of the teachers who made a big thing of using alternatives to words such as got and nice were simply aiming to enlarge their students' vocabulary, rather than totally erradicate those perfectly good words from it. If not, I would question their judgement and suitability to teach.

Just started re-reading Mansfield Park for the nth time. If Jane Austen can use 'got' (and she does, on the second page of her book) – "Fanny had got herself another child" – then the rest of us can too.

The word is from Old Norse as well as Old English. Nowt wrong with it and its multiple uses show how successful a piece of language it has been and still is.

Pompous teachers of old need to get off its back ;)

A language isn't static-it changes whether we like it or not !
All sorts of words were considered as vulgar or unsuitable when I went to preparatory school .
And (I'm breaking a rule here ) we had elocution lessons .
I remember my mother giving me the address book and telling ne to write the Christmas cards as she was too busy .
I wrote some casual words used in every day conversation and she was furious .
I had to do some of them again .
I also dislike sentences which begin with the word basically and at the end of the day.
Iconic is another word which I hear too frequently.

Daddima

Mollygo

downnotout
As school children though we 'got' the message. Or should that be we 'received' the message.
There are times when got is better IMO.
E.g. Your sentence or He got his just desserts!

If I asked a year 1 ^What have you got in your hand? The answer would be quick.
If I asked What are you concealing in your hand? the answer would probably be “What?” I then have to say, “Don’t say what, say pardon”

Ooh, ‘pardon’ was forbidden in our house! We were told to say, ‘What did you say?’ or even just, ‘What?’

I actually posted about still thinking of alternatives to ‘got’ 65 years after Miss Duffy forbade its use!
We were also chastised for saying things like, ‘ I ate my dinner’, as she would tell us we would hardly eat someone else’s dinner!

Also, AskAlices mention of ‘brang’ reminds me that I have heard some fellow Scots use ‘jamp’ as the past tense of ‘jump’.

‘Pardon’ was forbidden in our house, too. It’s considered overly ‘genteel’ and prissy.

At school we were told not to use ‘nice’ - so naturally one girl wrote an essay with ‘nice’ in every sentence.

The anti “pardon” brigade seemed to emerge around the same time Jilly Cooper published a book called Class. I think we can probably forgive our elders for absorbing some of that thinking.

By comparison, where you sat in the class war mattered far less to the post-war cohort, as a strong shift towards social democracy took hold, than it did to the pre-war generation - for whom the struggle to survive was closer to today’s America than to 1970s Great Britain.

Oh for heaven's sake! Get, got, gotten, all perfectly good Anglo-Saxon words, used by our best writers.
How this idea that they were to be avoided was planted into the heads of mid-century primary school teachers is a mystery.

Allsorts

Received.

They pick words to fit the space

Mollygo

downnotout
As school children though we 'got' the message. Or should that be we 'received' the message.
There are times when got is better IMO.
E.g. Your sentence or He got his just desserts!

If I asked a year 1 ^What have you got in your hand? The answer would be quick.
If I asked What are you concealing in your hand? the answer would probably be “What?” I then have to say, “Don’t say what, say pardon”

What is in your hands? What have you in your hands? No need for the additional GOT

I went to a grammar school in the late 60s and there were far more important daily issues than the use of 'got'.

The English language has evolved over the centuries and will continue to so once we've all moved on.

Suck it up buttercup.

I read with children in school, and am appalled at some of the books they are allowed. American slang rubbish.

I often spend time helping them to pronounce and then tell them it is bad English

How about this one

Dinosaurs got extinct .....

Dinosaurs went extinct....

Dinosaurs became extinct

??????

Cliff Richard singing "It belongs to you and I." (from "In the Country") really annoys me. Others make the same mistake.

FranP

I read with children in school, and am appalled at some of the books they are allowed. American slang rubbish.

I often spend time helping them to pronounce and then tell them it is bad English

Oh.

I was wondering how schools are teaching English now.

Presumably anything goes?