When speaking to my students of English I notice that they are often very unsure about using the expression ‘have got’, when talking about possession. I can completely understand that. After all, when learning English at elementary level, it is always easier to learn words which are exact translations of words in one’s own language. So, for a French native speaker, for example, why would you complicate things by translating ‘avoir’ as ‘have got’ if you can quite simply translate it as ‘have’? Well, my advice to students is that it’s worth the effort to use ‘have got’ because, if you use it correctly, it will make your English sound much more natural, because believe it or not, native English speakers use ‘have got’ much more often than you might think. Read on…
Learners of English learn very early that we use both ‘have’ and ‘have got’ to talk about possession (and relationships). For example, ‘I have or have got a computer’ and ‘I have or have got a brother’. However, the differences between ‘have’ and ‘have got’ aren’t always clear. So, here are a few things to remember;
Possession or action?
‘Have got’ is used for possession only (note – this is not when ‘got’ means ‘became’ or ‘has become’). For example:
‘’Susan has a lovely garden’’ or ‘’Susan has got lovely garden’’.
Because ‘have got’ is used only for possession, we cannot use this expression in sentences where ‘have’ is used to describe an action. In the following example, ‘have’ means ‘take’ not ‘possess’:
‘’David often has his lunch at 1pm’’, not ‘’David often has got his lunch at 1pm’’
Different form for questions
When asking a question, we use the Present Simple tense to talk about possession, and ‘have’ follows the same rules as all other verbs (with the exception of the verb ‘to be’ – for more information on asking questions in English click here ). Example:
‘’Do you have a new TV?’’, not ‘’Have you a new TV?’’ (the latter was more common in an older style of British English but would be considered as antiquated now)
However, if you want to use ‘have got’ for a question, you use the following form;
‘’Have you got a new TV?’’ not ‘‘Do you have got a new TV?’’
‘Have’ as an auxiliary verb for questions and negative statements
Note that although the auxiliary verb ‘have’ is used in the last example, we are not using the Present Perfect Simple tense here, since we are talking about the present. However, the sentence structure is the same as in the Present Perfect Simple. Consider the following comparison;
‘’Have I got a new bike?’’ (Present Simple)
‘’I’ve got a new bike’’ (Present Simple)
‘’I haven’t got a new bike’’ (Present Simple)
‘’Have I bought a new bike?’’ (Present Perfect Simple)
‘’I have bought a new bike’’ (Present Perfect Simple)
‘’I haven’t bought a new bike’’ (Present Perfect Simple)
Although the contraction of ‘have’ (‘ve) can be used when ‘have’ is used as an auxiliary verb, there is no contracted form for ‘have’ in the positive form. For example:
‘’I have a large kitchen’’ not ‘’I’ve a large kitchen’’
However, with ‘have got’ we can use the contracted form (‘ve) because here ‘have’ is the auxiliary verb. For example:
‘’I’ve got a new job’’
So, students of English, the next time you want to say that you ‘have’ a dog, you ‘have’ an apartment, or that you ‘have’ a nice car, trying inserting ‘I’ve got’ instead of ‘I have’; you will sound like a native speaker…it’s like magic!
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