Gotten's Bad Rap

The other night, I was watching a chat show called “Room 101.” For those of you who haven't seen it: a guest divulges a list of pet hates to the host (currently Johnny Vegas), who then decides whether each one deserves to be consigned to Room 101. The show title comes from Orwell’s book, 1984; it's the name of the torture chamber where prisoners are subjected to their worst nightmare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_101

Sir Alan Sugar, the U.K.’s answer to Donald Trump, included among his pet hates the American dictionary, and said something to the effect that Americans don’t speak proper English because they use words the British don’t use and everyone knows the Brits invented the language. Among his examples of words Americans apparently made up, he cites gotten, as in “I thought I’d gotten the part until Angela read for it.” Sir Alan would have said, “I’d got the part” instead.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/board/

I just wanted to point out that the word gotten originated from the U.K. It dropped out of use in the move from Middle English to Modern English, except in stock phrases such as ill-gotten and gotten up. In the U.S., however, it is still used as the past participle of get. I should mention that linguistics experts claim it’s not as simple as exchanging got for gotten either, though I won’t even attempt to go there. If you’re a wordophile, check out this link: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/gotten.html

So obviously, while Brits who remained in the U.K. eventually decided to shorten the word, the ones who had (by choice or mandate) moved across the Atlantic apparently didn’t get the memo.

I’m sure linguists can provide numerous examples of Australian, New Zealand and Canadian English that have met with a similar fate. But as long as we can still understand each other − the raison d’être of language − why concern ourselves with the details?