I forget his name. = I don't remember his name. (?)

[GeneD]

"Forget" is the opposite of "remember", right? Is it natural to say "I forget his name" instead of "I don't remember his name", for example? The thing is, in Russian we would rather say "I've forgotten" ("Я забыл")... What about English?

I forget his name. = I don't remember his name. Is this right?

 

[GoesStation]

Either sentence works in American English.

 

[bubbha]

It's common in conversational American English to say "I forget" when the intended meaning is "I have forgotten" or "I forgot". This doesn't work in all cases when the verb "forget" is used, and it also does not work with most verbs.

 

[jutfrank]

It's common in conversational American English to say "I forget" when the intended meaning is "I have forgotten" or "I forgot".

The same goes for conversational British English

 

[Phaedrus]

It's common in conversational American English to say "I forget" when the intended meaning is "I have forgotten" or "I forgot".

Another way to look at this, which avoids relegating this use of "forget" to conversational English (a categorization which makes it sound as if this way of speaking were inferior, though tolerated in certain dialects), is to see that "forget" can be used with stative meaning or with dynamic meaning, just as "remember" can. Each use has a different meaning for both verbs.

(1a) stative: I remember his name. It is John.
(1b) dynamic: I have just remembered his name. It is John.

(2a) stative: I forget his name. Do you know what it is?
(2b) dynamic: I forget his name all the time. I'm going to have to write it down.

In their dynamic use, "remember" indicates the emergence of a piece of information in one's memory bank, and "forget" that a piece of information has left one's memory bank. In their stative use, "remember" indicates that a piece of information is present in one's memory bank, and "forget" that a piece of information is absent from it (with the implication that it was there before).