<p>Most things Brits say sound classier than the American way. The 2 main exceptions I noticed while living in the UK were “got” and “reckon.” To the American ear, the former sounds crude and uneducated, and the latter sounds like cowboy slang.</p>
<p>Funny, I always think of reckon as a more American word.</p>
<p>If you think got sounds crude to Americans, ask an English person about the American term fanny pack. It took me years before I could hear or say that term without cringing. </p>
<p>One of my early memories in the US was reading the minutes (written by someone else) at a quilt guild meeting in front of about 100 ladies, and coming to a dead, and very embarrassed, stop at the words “fanny pack”.</p>
<p>(Hint - fanny is a very crude way in England of referring to a ladies, er, private parts).</p>
<p>Though now when I go home I find myself cringing at the general crudity and bad (as in foul, not grammatical) language in English society and on TV. (Don’t know if it is just because I live in a very conservative bible belt state, but I find the US much less crude).</p>
<p>LOL! We were in England recently and my H had an altercation with a bunch of drunks who thought it would be funny to knock on our hotel room door repeatedly at 2 am. He came out of the room and told them to knock it off and they called him a knob. We had never heard that expression before. The next morning at breakfast, D was telling the waiter what had happened and asked what a knob meant. The waiter started laughing, and a British woman seated near us said, “Dear, we don’t say that in public!” Apparently it’s a very vulgar term. Who would have known.</p>
<p>LOL. Yes it is very vulgar.</p>
<p>I guess it’s a good thing CC doesn’t have any British moderators! ;)</p>
<p>When I first worked for a US company in the UK there was a funny incident with a new American manager and his secretary. He asked her to get him something (it was a brand of some office supply in the US). He was confused when she became most insulted. The item he asked for was the name in England for a brand of condom. Can’t for the life of me think what it was called now.</p>
<p>Just got back from vacaion and was reading some older posts and found this thread.</p>
<p>fignewton, you say
You Got Mail: OK
You Have Mail: OK
You Have Got Mail: Not OK </p>
<p>What do you mean* OK*? Do you mean it is ungrammatical? And why do you say You’ve got mail is not* OK*?</p>
<p>It is perfectly standard in both American and British English as a **stative **possessive almost identical in meaning to have in its **stative **form, though often used to intensify the possessive meaning of *have *.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.monika-e-schulz.de/JHP-prepublication.pdf[/url]”>http://www.monika-e-schulz.de/JHP-prepublication.pdf</a></p>
<p>I don’t mean to carp, but many people might be misled by this inaccurate assertion. It is a grave disservice to college-bound students, especially those who are taking the SATs.</p>
<p>Strunk and White, among others, have suggested avoiding “have got” as a redundancy. The paper you cite mentions the “contempt” that the phrase has received over at least some of its long history. Whether “have got” is truly ungrammatical or not depends, of course, not on what a book says, but whether we continue to use it routinely or not. To this native speaker, it sounds wrong and/or unnecessary (especially without the contraction).</p>
<p>But to the hordes of SAT takers who have been given a grave disservice by my post, I apologize and humbly suggest that they speak more clearly.</p>