To loathe the gradual creep of "gotten " as accepted English

[BonnyDay]

In this country ?

Hugh Lofting uses "gotten" in the Dr Dolittle books. Iirc, they were written in the 1920's, so the word possibly hasn't been out of use that long.

I still don't like to see it though. The use of "ize" instead of "ise" bothers me more - realize instead of realise.

YABU.

The meaning of "gotten" is sufficiently different enough from "got" to make it useful. Just as much as it's useful to have the slight difference between "forgot" and "forgotten" and "forbid" and "forbidden".

Just because it fell out of fashion on this side of the Atlantic for a couple of centuries, I wouldn't like to see it banished forever.

Nitheen wrang wi 'gotten'.

Am gotten a bit tantled wi aa dis fok hit tink dey cin tell me whit wye am meant tae spik.

I find -ize and -ise both look wrong to me now. So for personal satisfaction, I alternate them. I may be responsible for raised blood pressure internationally.

Is that a present day dialect, or Chaucerian?

Either way, impressed.

Present day - although maybe not for long.

Ower mony o wir young fok canna be fashed wi it.

But there are far worse:

aks for ask (pronounce the words in the right order)
I done it for I did it
was you going early
I ain't got none; well yes you have actually

FrozenFlowers I was thinking the same thing myself! Hear "gotten" all the time in Glasgow.

Marriedinwhite, I'm totally with you on those!

Agree. I was sat.
Is mark of an imbecile.

Oh I say 'I was sat' sometimes. I don't mind new words creeping into the language - whther they are olde englishe ones like gotten coming back into use because of the American influence, or brand new words like for eg twitter and google.

YANBU

Old English or not, people are only saying it because Americans do.

Gotten just winds me up for some reason.

I've been saying gotten most of my 40 years, it certainly isn't anything to do with Americans. It's very much part of the local dialect and has been for many years.

"I was sat" does have a meaning though: it means that someone physically lifted you and plonked you down in a sitting position (as opposed to "I was seated" which means that you chose/were directed to sit in a certain place, or "I was sitting" which describes your position, or "I sat" which describes your action or position).

I do find it a shame when changes to language tend to reduce, rather than increase, its expressiveness.

AnneTwacky

I'm interested: could you be kind and give some examples of where forbid/forgot and forbidden/forgotten have different meanings (as opposed to being different forms of the same verb invariably used in particular tenses or moods)? And also when gotten has a distinctly different meaning to got (rather than being an interchange variant participle)?

As you can tell, I like collecting examples!

"I KNOW it's Olde English but I'm with you Bonny," me no likey

Do you not see the irony of that post? (Not picking on you, just saying).

people are only saying it because Americans do.

I am another one,who has always used it. My mother (84) has, also, she speaks absolute correct English.

It may have died out in some regions, but it didn't in all.

BonnyDay - slightly weird question but do you have a friend living in Alaska?

Never heard of 'ill-gotten gains' in other words stolen money or those proceeds of crime. It's very old English and therefore nothing to complain about.

Unlike mixing up lend and borrow

I hate when people ask 'Can I lend your pen?'
I usually reply 'Certainly and who would you like to lend it to?'
Cue blank looks from them

'gotten' is recent in 'English' English. I don't know about in Scotland, but here it was considered an Americanism not to be tolerated.

meditrina that's precisely why I hate "I was sat". Thay're not saying what they actually mean. Well, the vast majority of the time, anyway.

And I wonder where thd Americans got it from...

well my friend from the west country (of England) says it all the time, it makes perfect sense, little kids use it when they are learning as it goes with 'forget/forgot/ forgotten' - 'get/got/gotten' -

interestingly, marriedinwhite aks for ask is what would have been used once upon a time in this country too, it was just exported to America and the Caribbean and imported back again several hundred years later. Think about it, ASKED has a consonant cluster and is actually quite hard to say - alot of people actually say 'arsed' not asked, personally I would rather AKSED that ARSED.

I have no patience with 'I was sat' either! not the same league! and as for mixing up 'lend' and 'borrow' ---ewwwwww

"I bit my lip as I was sat down roughly on the bed." Grammatically acceptable!

yy to gotten. Hate it and agree it's only creeping in as an Americanism, not because of any harking back to olde English.

Also yy to 'I was sat'.

FB has exposed 50% of the people I know as grammar half-wits.

I absolutely agree 100%. It's dreadful. I remember an American writer being taken to task for it and she said it was Old English. Never heard this term being used by Scottish people.