Wow!!!! It was not my intention to cause a discussion on "got" vs "gotten". However, I'm pleased everyone got so involved. I has been very instructive. My real question was about the response from readers and publishers to the different types/styles/origins (?) of language used by writers. That is, if there is a difference in the responses. From what I can deduce from some of the things said in the discussion is that there is no difference either way as long as the style is appropriate to the context and gross errors are avoided. That is, a well known British author could write a detective story set in N.Y. in American (sounding) English and that would be fine. But if she wrote the same story set in London it would have to be written in British English to be acceptable. Am I right?
My advice would be for her to make the lead character american , and thus have an excuse for the americanisms Likewise my second Dusty Miller book Darkest Storm is set in America (mostly) but Dusty is English and its from his point of view so its fine if I write petrol rather than gas and so forth
There are those who think that the word "gotten" has a legitimate place in the language, because it allows one to distinguish two senses of the word "got" "We have got the money." The money is now in our possession. "We have gotten the money." The money has been received by us, although it may not be in our possession at this time. As for why Brits have discarded perfectly good English words as "fall" and "guess" and now consider them the trademarks of barbarous Americans, I have no clue.
Umm we haven't We just don't use Fall to mean Autumn ... we'd still say Autumn is a time when leaves fall from the trees for example And we don't generally say "I guess" to mean 'well you know I'm not sure' - we'd still say 'If i had to guess , which I do since ive not been there , the moon probably isn't made of cheese'
Ah. I should have been more explicit, and said "fall as the name of a season." I didn't mean that the word itself went away. Sorry about that. Again, I should have been more specific. I was thinking of "guess" in the sense of "suppose." I quote Chaucer: "Of twenty year of age he was, I guess." As for why that usage would fall out of fashion, your guess is as good as mine.
Fall/autumn is a weird one as Autumn is the older word coming from "autumnus" in Latin , with Fall being a contraction of 'fall of leaf' which didn't enter common usage until the 16th century As to why america adopted one and England the other when the languages diverged I suspect in England Leaf fall doesn't always characterise the third season... I mean we are well into winter and some trees still have their leaves now
No, Chaucer was using guess in the sense of guess; as in "He was twenty years old, I would have to guess because I don't actually know." Although I have to admit that it is a bit of a grey area...two definitions that have a degree of overlap. to suppose: think or assume that something is true or probable but lack proof or certain knowledge. to guess: estimate or conclude (something) without sufficient information to be sure of being correct. So Chaucer could have written "Of twenty year of age he was, I suppose." Thinking out loud, is the distinction that a guess is on a sliding scale (so the guess could have been any number between zero and infinity [we've just had a "teenager" - to minimise his sentence - revealed as being 33!]), whereas a supposition is either/or? Which would make my rewrite of Chaucer incorrect (since it's not a choice between being twenty or only one other age).
I don't think that "autumn" entered the English language until after the Norman Conquest, although "autumnus" had been in the Latin language for millenia. Of course, we don't know when "fall" entered the language, but not having an OED at hand, I'd guess that it went back farther than the Conquest, even in the specific sense of "the time of falling leaves." If anybody does have an OED, please look it up for us. The concept of seasons, in the sense of specific time intervals demarcated by equinoxes and solstices, is a fairly recent one. (IIRC, in some parts of the British Isles, May 1 was the traditional day that summer started.) By modern American definitions, we won't be into winter until December 21. I don't know how you Brits figure where seasons start and end these days. Which is exactly how Americans use it today. We also use it in the sense of "I suppose" as in "I guess we'll have to wait until the next election before we see any changes." But I've heard it in "I guess he'll be there on time because he promised Alice that he would, but you know how flaky he is."
The word "fall" has always been in the English language, directly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pōl-. In the sense of Autumn, it seems to date back the the 16th century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crataegus I think you may be referring to the Scots saying "Ne'er cast a cloot til Mey's oot", which conveys a warning not to shed any cloots (clothes) before the summer has fully arrived and the Mayflowers (hawthorn blossoms) are in full bloom The custom of employing the flowering branches for decorative purposes on 1 May is of very early origin, but since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the tree has rarely been in full bloom in England before the second week of that month.
