What do you got?

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Jiayun

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Is the captioned sentence ok for oral English?

Thanks!

JY
 

birdeen's call

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Well, it's not impossible in American English. I've heard native speakers say things like this. I can easily imagine someone saying, "What d'ya got?" but even the full form, "What do you got?" seems possible. And there's "Britian DOES got talent!" which I saw on Youtube some time ago.
 
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Raymott

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Well, it's not impossible in American English. I've heard native speakers say things like this. I can easily imagine someone saying, "What d'ya got?" but even the full form, "What do you got?" seems possible. And there's "Britian DOES got talent!" which I saw on Youtube some time ago.
You might be hearing "What h'ya got?" (What have you got?)
"Britain DOES got talent!" is intended to be comical. It's not a serious attempt at proper English.
Tweety: "I tought I taw a putty tat. I did! I did taw a putty tat!" It's possible to watch and understand this cartoon without actually accepting this as proper English.
 

birdeen's call

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The name of the TV show is "Britain's Got Talent" which is grammatical. I'm not sure if that's what you meant.

No, I know what the show is called. It was something someone said in comments or somewhere. I don't recommend Jiayun use it. I'm just reporting what I once read. I checked that user's profile then, and it said they were from the US.
 

birdeen's call

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You might be hearing "What h'ya got?" (What have you got?)
"Britain DOES got talent!" is intended to be comical. It's not a serious attempt at proper English.
It didn't look like it was intended to be comical. I've found the whole comment:

Damn...Britain DOES got talent. Now if they could win a couple gold medals....

If that was supposed to be funny, then it's a failed attempt in my opinion. Now I see another comment:

You mean the guy who said "britain does got talent"? Jeez, course i got that, dont patronise me. he used terrible grammar, that was my point. "Don't got" isnt correct. Americans make that mistake a lot. He should have said "Britain has got talent". Or do *you* not get *that*?

Here's a short discussion on this (starting from the post by Mr Wordy): did you got it?
 

Chicken Sandwich

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Birdeen's call is right, in that "What do you got?" is used colloquially, even though it's not considered to be "good" English (see also this thread). (I have heard it used in colloquial AmE, but then again, I've also heard stuff like, 'There was many people in the bar' which demonstrates that many odd ungrammatical structures occur in spoken English.)

This usage probably originated from "I've got," which sometimes sounds like "I got" if the pronunciation isn't clear. Michael Swan writes about this issue in Practical English Usage:

The weak form of have in I've got is so quiet that it is often not heard at all; and people are beginning to say I got instead of I've got. In time, this could become a new regular form.
 
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Raymott

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It didn't look like it was intended to be comical. I've found the whole comment:

Damn...Britain DOES got talent. Now if they could win a couple gold medals....

If that was supposed to be funny, then it's a failed attempt in my opinion. Now I see another comment:

You mean the guy who said "britain does got talent"? Jeez, course i got that, dont patronise me. he used terrible grammar, that was my point. "Don't got" isnt correct. Americans make that mistake a lot. He should have said "Britain has got talent". Or do *you* not get *that*?

Here's a short discussion on this (starting from the post by Mr Wordy): did you got it?
It's also necessary to remember that there are some dialects, such as African American Vernacular English, which do not follow the rules for Standard English. That is, it becomes used in AAVE as a cultural marker, because it is specifically not standard English. But you don't find it elsewhere, unless a person becomes a de facto member of that certain subculture.
For all I know, "Did you got it?" is normal in some forms of AAVE, and many Americans speak this dialect, and most of them have internet access. It's also normal in AAVE to say, "He in Memphis today", "He be in Memphis."
But none of this makes it Standard English or correct English to say these things. Maybe one day it will be, if it spreads out of the subculture from which it arises.
This is interesting:
http://africanamericanenglish.com/2010/08/05/why-would-you-study-that-bad-english/
 

birdeen's call

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"What do you got" isn't standard, but it's certainly not restricted to AAVE. I've heard it (and other similar things) said by people who did not use the dialect otherwise. It may be where the construction originated of course. I don't know.
 

Barb_D

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The OP might like to read that the standard grammar for this, on both side of the Atlantic as far as I know, is "What do you have?"
 

bhaisahab

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The OP might like to read that the standard grammar for this, on both side of the Atlantic as far as I know, is "What do you have?"

I agree. "What have you got" is also widely used in BrE.
 
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