Dear Hillary,
I need to comment on the debate between “got” and “gotten” as an American. Firstly, language evolves and is not static and never has been. Our collection of words that we call “English” has so many German, French and Celtic roots it is an amalgam that to suggest there is a “British vs American” way of speaking overlooks your Commonwealth partner Canada. Do you intend to also give language lessons to the Australians? English was largely crafted by evolution and just because American English is the world standard preferred business language… speaks to the wealth of its evolution.
An apple. An orange. A tree. Note it is not “an tree.” The article “an” is used when there is an “a” or “e” sound in the subject and makes the sentence more musical to the ear. Now, “got on” or “gotten on” are equally correct, but one is definitely more musical.
The bus itself was a French invention in fact and the plural is spelled in two different ways… buses and busses. Usage in either form is interchangeable. As you are speaking in third person with your phrase (describing someone else) “got” and “gotten” are both past tense verbs. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gotten?s=t
Present tense: “I am getting on a bus.”
Future tense: “I will get on a bus.”
“Purity of communication” my dear doctor Hillary Dolittle? Have you spoken to a British person in their 20’s lately? Or worse yet have you tried to understand a Yorkshire or Scottish person? We Americans have not massacred anything linguistically more than you have, but the language is not frozen in stone just because the extremely massacre prone British Empire has ended. (Including those you performed in Canada. You can check massacres of the British Empire online.) That said we all have phrases that bother us… “Ya know, mate?” “Good on” Prince William for being the first British royal to work for a living flying a helicopter. Even royalty evolves just as language must.
Robert
Dear Robert,
Dare I say thank you for the scholarly barrage sent in my direction? How we managed to get Parisian busses into the mix, I have no idea, but then, of course, I am not a proud American, such as you, so that probably is the reason that you were giving the Canadians some stick.
However, if you wish to nit pick, you use “an” before any word starting with a vowel (that’s a-e-i-o-u at last count) and not just “a” and “e” and also before a word starting with “h” such as an hotel. Does sound better, I agree. In Thai we use “na” as a word with no meaning, but just there to keep the words flowing.
You also seem to have a problem with “its” and “it’s”, the former shows possession, while the latter is a contraction of “it is”. So where you wrote “speaks to the wealth of it’s evolution” it should be “speaks to the wealth of its evolution”. But thank you for your interest my Petal and the language lessons which are always appreciated, and I’ll get off the bus now, if I may? Next stop Dijon?
