Australians are taught to regard this as "wrong" or "ungrammatical" or as an informal/slangy US usage. As a result relatively few realise that (a) it is acceptable and normal in the US and that (b) it is actually very old. ’Tis ironic given that the word parallels with a whole lot of other words that we do use, such as "driven" and "written", not to mention "shown".
I'm quite fond of "gotten", but to give the Antipodean response to jennarenn's question, Aussies would most likely eschew the get verb altogether (another legacy of the education system) and say: "We had just arrived when..."
Australians are taught to regard this as "wrong" or "ungrammatical" or as an informal/slangy US usage. As a result relatively few realise that (a) it is acceptable and normal in the US and that (b) it is actually very old. ’Tis ironic given that the word parallels with a whole lot of other words that we do use, such as "driven" and "written", not to mention "shown".
I'm quite fond of "gotten", but to give the Antipodean response to jennarenn's question, Aussies would most likely eschew the get verb altogether (another legacy of the education system) and say:
"We had just arrived when..."
I'm guessing they'd probably go with arrived or shown up...?
What would they say in the UK?
"We had just gotten there when...."
That is strange. I've never gotten why that is.
It is strange how this is used in the US but in the UK it is archaic .