I've not vs I haven't

Trimac20   Fri May 15, 2009 1:43 am GMT
Watching old movies and reading books written before about the 1960s, I notice in the old days people were much more likely to say 'I've not' - abbreviating the words 'I and have' instead of 'I haven't' abbreviated the 'have and not.' Now that sounds rather quaint. Does anyone else notice this? It's probably just another modernisation of speech, but it seems to have changed around the 1960s.
MollyB   Fri May 15, 2009 8:01 am GMT
Over 400 examples per one million words in both COCA and the BNC. So, why do you think it isn't used much? It is.
rapp   Mon May 18, 2009 4:13 pm GMT
I wonder if there is a British versus American usage difference here. I'm American, and I would exclusively use the "I haven't" form. "I've not" sounds British to me, but I wouldn't swear by it.
Leasnam   Mon May 18, 2009 4:22 pm GMT
"I've not" is still common when the 'have' is an auxillary, as in:

"I've not seen her around here before"

But for the most part, "I've not" as in "I've not the time to help him out" has been supplanted by "I don't have the time to help him out"

I agree, that the non-modal frequency of "I've not" seems higher in British English than American.
MollyB   Mon May 18, 2009 10:19 pm GMT
377 per million words of "I've not + past participle".

COCA

http://www.americancorpus.org/

----------------

344 per million words of "I've not + past participle".

BNC

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
Mollyb   Mon May 18, 2009 10:23 pm GMT
1 per million words of "I've not the...".

COCA

http://www.americancorpus.org/

----------------

2 per million words of "I've not the...".

BNC

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
Entbark   Wed May 20, 2009 4:36 am GMT
I never hear "I've not," but hear "I haven't" (aux) or "I don't have" (poss) all the time.
Person   Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:41 am GMT
I'm American. I hear "I haven't..." quite often, but almost never "I've not." "I've not" sounds like a Britishism to me.
Uriel   Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:52 am GMT
I've got to agree -- American vs. British usage. Once in a while you will hear an American say it, but it doesn't really ring right, although grammatically it's perfectly acceptable. And as in Australia, it was much more common in the past, and sounds old-fashioned today.

I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral the other day, and I was struck by the fact that Andie McDowell, although American in real life and also in the film, was stuck spouting very British-sounding turns of phrase throughout the movie. Not that she's any great shakes as an actress to begin with, but it rendered her even more wooden and unnatural-sounding than usual.
K. T.   Wed Jun 03, 2009 10:53 pm GMT
I say it and I'm American. It sounds perfectly natural for me to say,
"I've not done that before." or the example that Leasnam gave.
Jimmy   Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:58 pm GMT
Quote: "and I was struck by the fact that Andie McDowell, although American in real life and also in the film, was stuck spouting very British-sounding turns of phrase throughout the movie."

Wouldn't that be the case with an upper class American lady who happens to be living in the UK surrounded by rather posh and/or cultivated Brits?

Doesn't one adapt to country and social class milieu? After all Hugh Grant is a cultivated London librarian and she goes all the way to marry in a castle in Scotland!

She might be "wooden" (although I personally like her in that role) but she certainly dind't write the script. Even the American accent is more or less affected if you're exposed to another English accent.

This is also the case with British actors. There are lots of interviews in youtube and it's quite funny to compare the same actors when they speak for a British or an American audience.

There are changes, don't you doubt it and what is passive knowledge of another English variety becomes active use when required.
Uriel   Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:46 pm GMT
Maybe it would happen. I don't know. I also didn't get much of a sense of how much time she had spent in the UK vs. the US, although obviously it had been long enough to rack up a husband.

But I suspect that it had more to do with the screenplay having had a British writer, who wrote what he knew and wasn't necessarily studied in American dialect. To be honest, there was no real reason for Andie McDowell's character to even be American; it seemed kind of like an afterthought, or something written in later after the casting had been done. She didn't have much of a backstory. So the sense I got was that the part had originally been written for a British character.

(And here I expect to hear clamorous cries of "They cast her to attract an American audience!" News flash: we don't go see foreign flicks to catch rare glimpses of our own actors. We have a massive movie industry of our own. We catch glimpses of them all the time. If we go see a Brit flick it's because we want to see Brits. Usually it comes as a surprise to see American actors alongside them.)

The other oddity that makes me think that the screenwriter simply had a tenuous grasp on Americans was the inclusion of a rabid fundamentalist evangelical type from Minnesota. Now, that's possible too, but pretty unlikely. Minnesotans are known in the US for being fairly taciturn, reserved Lutheran types. I can see why this one might have felt he had to escape to foreign shores! But it seemed to me that this was simply a case of the writer being unfamiliar with US regional demographics.
Travis   Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:05 pm GMT
Actually, just so you know, there are most definitely religious fundamentalists found off the beaten track in various parts of the Upper Midwest, even though they are more likely to be Lutheran or Calvinist types than those found in what is commonly thought of "Middle America".
Jimmy   Sun Jun 07, 2009 12:17 am GMT
It happens all the time because native English speakers can be cast in any English-language film regardless of their original English variety.


The flow started in the 30s and originally attracted more Brits to the American film industry than Americans to Britain. It even started with Chaplin in silent pictures.

It took a while for Brits to accept American English (if they ever really have come to terms with it) whilst a nice English accent always found a place in great Hollywood classics.

Why on Earth did they choose Vivien Leigh to play a southern American aristocratic lady from the Civil War Days? Yes she did adapt to a southern drawl but there is always something English from England in her language.

Wasn't Olivia Newton-John an Australian who'd just arrived to the USA shores in long ago GREASE? She couldn't get rid of the accent, could she?

Why on Earth would a nive Australian girl from the 50s move to an American High School for? It was more England for Australians in those days. Yes her father could have been an engineer looking for an American work experience! Or was she visiting Australian relatives in California? I don't remember and why would an Australian of the 50s have relatives in California?

Back to Andy. One thing is for a British film to accept an American partand another quite different has having her massacring what they consider to be the original.

They could have made her speak her in a more American way without paying a coach. It was as easy as telling her: "learn your lines but adapt them as you would say them as a true blue American."

It wasn't expected at all. It goes all the way back to the 19th century when the first rich American girls began pouring in money in decadent castles owned by an earl without a shilling in his pocket.There are lots of novels on the subject. They could speak with a moderate American accent (how quaint they would have said!) but she certainly would have been expected to speak "proper English" and not use "along" when one is expected to use "on".

I believe Andy Mc Dowell's character is expected to belong to the kind of Americans who still think England is where it all began. That makes the Brits feel much better concerning their rich cousins.

Well coming to think of it. She probably had been reading at Cambridge or Orxford for a few years before the plot begins. As you say there is very little background in that sense although she seems to be quite at ease and familiar with the old country.

I saw the pictures ages ago although they put them on the telly every now and then! Always watch for a few minutes.
Uriel   Tue Jun 09, 2009 2:47 am GMT
I'm pretty sure Olivia Newton-John was cast because of her singing and not her acting....;) I forget why she was supposed to have moved to the US, but there was some explanation for it, and she was allowed to be her own nationality. Same went for Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You -- he was simply an Australian character in an American high school. Nothing wrong with that -- we like an exotic touch as much as the next bunch. Nor is it unusual in real life to have exchange students and other visitors in American high schools, so maybe it doesn't strike us as odd in that context. I went to school with all kinds of people -- and a number really were of mixed-nationality parentage, so they did have relatives in the oddest places -- Argentina, Australia, all over Asia, etc.

When I KNOW an actor is the actual nationality they are playing and there is some trumped up excuse for why they are where they are -- as opposed to it really being an intrinsic part of the story -- I always think of it as The Jean Claude Van Damme Effect. He can't shake his accent, so they come up with the most outrageous origin stories for him -- he's been everything from a Cajun (dear god!) to an orphan raised by French nuns in Hong Kong (go with it...) If only they would cast him as a deaf-mute and let him get on with why he was REALLY hired, without the silly backstories!



<<It goes all the way back to the 19th century when the first rich American girls began pouring in money in decadent castles owned by an earl without a shilling in his pocket.There are lots of novels on the subject.>>

There are? I've never heard of this genre!