this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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Showerthoughts

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English is weird (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by Anonymouse@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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I got hung up on contractions this morning regarding the word "you've". Normally, I'd say "you've got a problem", which expands to "you have got a problem", which isn't wrong, but I normally wouldn't say. Not contracting, I'd say "you have a problem", so then should I just say "you've a problem"? That sounds weird in my head. Is this just a US English problem?

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[–] Horsey@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Contractions are very regional and a product of spoken English which varies quite a lot from place to place. For example, I use contractions that I don’t see people around me using like: y’all (plural 2nd person pronoun that’s missing in official English speech; verbs are conjugated the same as 2nd person singular forms), shouldn’t’ve, gonna (going to/ going to want to), wanna (want to), that’re, then’ll, then’re etc.