You’ve Got Mail
This is fast becoming one of my biggest pet peeves, mainly because I find myself falling into it more and more often, not because I don’t know how proper English, but because I’m being influence subconsciously by corporate America.
As most of the universe knows, You’ve Got Mail is the phrase uttered by AOL to signify when an account has email. However, when you expand the contraction, you end up with “you have got mail.” Who talks like that?!? In what form of English is that proper? I cringe every time I hear it or see it used, especially when I find myself typing “I’ve got” in emails, blog posts, etc. I manage to correct myself most of the time, but nevermind that I do catch myself. I hate that I even type it to begin with!
So next time you’ve got an email to reply to, you’ve got to make sure to avoid using this phrase . We’ve got to improve our grammar! I’ve got to get to bed now. Until next time, when I’ve got more to post…
Geesh…
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Nov 18th, 2006 at 18:56:11
You’ve got a point.
(raise hand to mouth, extend pinky to lips)
Nov 20th, 2006 at 14:05:17
ok…sorry for the delayed response to this one Chris but MY WP difficulties and some issues in homelife have conspired to keep me from being able to string 2 semi-coherant thoughts together AND get them into a computer so here I finaly am.
I think what you have here nmore than anything else here is a case of recognizable Linguistic Drift. or more to the point Lexical Stock Expansion. English Majors, Educators and Linguists the world around hate Liguistic Drift and I have heard them oft Pontificate on how the English language today is so much swill compared to that of 20 years ago or 40 or 50. However, I beleave something as simple as “You’ve got mail.” is inevitable. Our language today is nearly unrecongizable compared to that of Shakespeare…or carry further back and it truly does become unrecognizable. Is it somehow inferior? I don’t think so. I just think it is evolving. Do I think we should accept Ebonics as the lexicon of tommorrow? By all means NO. However, I do believe that though we should not go gently into thet good night….the raging may nead to be jkept to a dull roar. Pardon the pun but do you get my Drift?
HedoSean
Nov 20th, 2006 at 14:06:43
I had to apologize for the atrocious spelling in that last response. I hit submit before even reading it over let along spell checking it.
HedoSean
Nov 20th, 2006 at 18:20:19
Interesting site you linked to…
Lol, I was gonna comment on the spelling, but you beat me to it
Nov 30th, 2006 at 17:19:08
this article makes a persuasive argument in support of “you’ve got mail”:
Why is it that “You have mail†doesn’t quite have the ring that “You’ve got mail†has? It’s because, as noted earlier, “have†denotes simple possession, while “got†carries the additional sense of acquisition. If I log on and learn “You have mail,†it may well be the same mail I had all along; while if I log on and am greeted with “You’ve got mail,†I know at once that this is new mail that I’ve recently received. Thus “You’ve got mail†is a defensible construction, since the message is “You have received mailâ€; whereas “I’ve got a question for you†should actually be “I have a question . . . .â€
from http://www.wsba.org/media/publications/barnews/august+cumbow.htm
i was hoping to find someone on the order of william safire of the ny times to weigh in on the topic, but didn’t find any such highbrow discussion. we could invoke the controversial linguist noam chomsky, who basically says that native speakers are always correct, but then you get into the whole subject of who exactly is a native speaker, what if two native speakers don’t agree, and so forth.
Nov 30th, 2006 at 17:20:23
i tried to list a website after the word “from” in the previous post; i’ll just link this note to it instead. cheers!
Nov 30th, 2006 at 23:00:44
Hmm, interesting argument and examples of use. Thanks for posting it Kevin.
P.S. I added the link to your first comment.