{"id":824,"date":"2020-06-26T18:32:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T18:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/?p=824"},"modified":"2022-01-03T22:15:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T22:15:58","slug":"got-milk-another-example-of-bad-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/got-milk-another-example-of-bad-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Got Milk?&#8221; Another Example of Bad Grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/1024px-Glass_of_Milk_33657535532-1021x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-825\" width=\"483\" height=\"484\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>This phrase &#8220;<strong>Got milk?<\/strong>&#8221; s trademarked by the California Milk Processor Board and for advertising purposes, it&#8217;s protected. But it&#8217;s not good English.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what&#8217;s wrong with the ubiquitous &#8220;<strong>Got milk?<\/strong>&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Does it mean &#8220;Do you have any milk (in your refrigerator or lunch bag, etc.)?&#8221; Or does it mean &#8220;Have you had milk (yet)?&#8221; Somebody could also be wondering &#8220;Did you get milk (when you went to the store)?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>This phrase is not only an example of BAD GRAMMAR but it&#8217;s also not clear what it means. Is the main verb from &#8220;to have&#8221; or is from &#8220;to get&#8221;?<\/p>\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at this verb by verb, beginning with the verb &#8220;(to) have&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The <strong>simple present tense<\/strong> of this verb is <strong><em>have<\/em>.<\/strong> <\/li><li>The <strong>present perfect tense<\/strong> of this verb would be <strong><em>have had<\/em>.<\/strong> <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>One question for simple present tense could be &#8220;Do you have milk?&#8221;  The second question for present perfect tense would be &#8220;Have you had milk?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at the verb &#8220;(to) get&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The <strong>simple present tense<\/strong> of this verb is <strong><em>get<\/em><\/strong>.<\/li><li>The<strong> simple past tense<\/strong> is <strong><em>got<\/em><\/strong>.<\/li><li>The <strong>present perfect tense<\/strong> is <strong>have <em>gotten<\/em>.  <\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The simple present tense question is &#8220;<strong>Do<\/strong> you <strong>get<\/strong> milk (delivered to your door every day)?&#8221; The simple past tense question with got would have to be something like &#8220;<strong>Who got <\/strong>the chocolate milk yesterday?&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s catchy. In the advertisements, the question asked by the actor would likely be <strong>&#8220;Do you have any milk?&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of our readers pointed out that advertisers cannot trademark a phrase that&#8217;s in common use. Therefore, they devise something that&#8217;s not grammatically correct and therefore not commonly used.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some don&#8217;t like the slogan because they think milk is not so good for you. Others, like me, like milk &#8211; though low-fat. I drink it every day. It has calcium and it&#8217;s also the base for my yogurt and the probiotics that I have every day. Whichever side of that fence you are on is for another blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Either way, milk and yogurt lover or not, don&#8217;t rely on the milk lobby for your grammar needs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This phrase &#8220;Got milk?&#8221; s trademarked by the California Milk Processor Board and for advertising purposes, it&#8217;s protected. But it&#8217;s not good English. But what&#8217;s wrong with the ubiquitous &#8220;Got milk?&#8221;\u00a0 Does it mean &#8220;Do you have any milk (in your refrigerator or lunch bag, etc.)?&#8221; Or does it mean &#8220;Have you had milk (yet)?&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,3],"tags":[47,46,48,49],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-grammar","tag-advertising","tag-grammar","tag-trademarks","tag-verbs","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":856,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}