'Gotten'

[JollyGiraffe]

WHY has this awful word made its way over here from?!

Past participle of 'to get' is 'got'!!!

"BeAlert, is 'gotten' taught in Scottish and Irish schools or is it just used colloquially? Genuine question, I am interested."

I use gotten, being English, it's perfectly acceptable.

The Scottish thing is interesting though, because I always use the fact that Maggie Smith also uses it.

So does Judi Dench and Joanna Lumley, so it might be a previous Generationx thing. I grew up around my Nan, who was born 1910 and used it.

I hate it when people over here call a television series a 'season'! Drives me mad!

I watch a lot of British TV. When I refer to British programmes, I use "series". With American shows, I use "season". (I'm Canadian.)

English is spoken in many countries besides England and America.

Some of counties freely use the word 'gotten'.

It's just a word.

I have more of a problem with 'I seen', 'I done', and mispronunciations like 'f' for 'th', all of which are the preserve of people in the UK.

I started using MN about eighteen months ago. The only time I saw 'gotten' in a post was when written by an American. It's slowly crept in and been used by people in the UK but quite amazingly so on here in the past month or so. Why is this? , it's the same with being 'pissed' instead of 'pissed off'. I have never heard this said in real life in the UK, maybe people feel a bit braver behind a keyboard or I'm just not mixing in the right circles!
I'm sure it is, as others have said, used in some areas in UK, but I have never, ever heard these words said in real life except by an American

Agreed! It's awful!! There's no need to use it either 🤢

Beamur the north of England was part of the Danelaw. Scandinavian words brought by settling Vikings filtered both into what became modern English (eg egg, shirt, ill etc) and into regional dialects.

So similarities between modern Danish and dialectical words in particular regions aren’t as surprising as you’d think.

Disinterested for uninterested really annoys me

As to disinterested/uninterested, actually, the "not interested" meaning of disinterested is older than the "impartial" meaning of the word going back as far as 1600 or so. It shifted sometime later and grammarians began to insist on a distinction between the two. The meaning is now shifting back. "Dis" and "un" mean essentially the same thing. It's different meanings of "interest" that keep the distinction alive. When I am editing, I recommend finding another word for "disinterested" when the writer means impartial because I think there are so few readers who even recognize the distinction these days.

It has been said it my little corner of the uk all of my 46 years and most probably much longer. I'm not going to stop using it just because someone thinks it's American. It's not.

Why use 'oftentimes' when 'often' will 'suffice'!

I'm British-born, but have lived in the States since the age of 13, and I flit between both British-English and American-English.

A lot of the Americanisms people get so fucking snobby about, were actually brought over here by the British, and while they have fallen out of favor back in the UK, they are still used here.

It always makes me laugh, when Brits label 'soccer' as an Americanism, when that term originated in the Britain.

There's so much snobbery towards so-called Americanisms, and quite frankly, it's pathetic.

"whilst". While we're talking about stupid pointless throwback words. That one is near top of my list.

But if I said, 'it's got late' rather than 'it's gotten late' .. it wouldn't sound right, it sounds wrong. It sounds like 'He done it again' rather than 'he has done it again'.

And Maroon Pencil ... I am very definitively English, with a PG degree in English Literature, and I have used 'gotten' all of my life. Not so failsafe is it? Its very much used by almost everyone in my generation ( Im 22).

But if I said, 'it's got late' rather than 'it's gotten late' .. it wouldn't sound right, it sounds wrong. It sounds like 'He done it again' rather than 'he has done it again'.

yes. I also cannot imagine saying about a child "my he got big" would always say "my, he's gotten big"

The one I hate the most is "sat" as in "I was sat on the sofa". It seems to have crossed into accepted language in the UK.

But that didn't come from America. I had never "I was sat" before I stumbled across a message board that was mainly British.

Sorry my post was confusing - I know it is pure British (and I think English specifically - maybe a particular region?). I think it sounds awful.

People will have been using gotten on MN for many years because many people in the UK use the word. The only reason some RP-fetishising defenders of the English language have only recently started noticing it is that it’s one of the more recent language pedantries to emerge on the internet.

"I was sat" is incorrect grammar, it should be " I was sitting"

"Off of" keeps turning up in the UK now. I don't like it ( but I love the word "horrid").

YANBU. It’s highly irritating.

Gotten is perfectly acceptable in my part of Scotland. Just because people down south have forgotten it, does not make it a misbegotten Americanism. It's a proper word, not some ill-gotten gain from America.

Puremince great post

Anything that isn't immediately familiar to me as a lifelong resident of SE England is clearly wrong and the people who say it are stupid and parochial. Obviously.

Also while I abhor racism (ironically mainly limited to an Americanised understanding of topics like Martin Luther King and To Kill A Mockingbird) I have no problem with bigotry against those stupid Celts and, worst of all, Americans. Ugh. They are basically animals and I'm threatened and scared by the way everyone bafflingly prefers their cultural output than the tedious dated shite I love.

TBH, the word ‘horrid’ makes everyone sound like they’ve been imported from an Enid Blyton novel.
Goes with 'utter'.

WHY has this awful word made its way over here from?!

Should you really be commenting on other peoples language OP? Perhaps think more about your own?