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I've been hearing a lot of complaints about this in relation to the Thanks Obamacare campaign in Colorado, but trying to look for information on "Do you got xxx" I don't find too much to actually show that it's right or wrong, no matter how it looks.

Lee
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  • @FumbleFingers - I thought it might be, but that stems from "Whadayagot". In this case it's not "What have you got insurance". It didn't sound like they were coming from the same place here. Not sure I understand how they're the same. BlessedGeek - I'm not sure I'm confused about it, it doesn't look or sound right to me at all, I'd just like to know if that's the case, how to explain why it's wrong to others. – Lee Dec 31 '13 at 05:21
  • @Lee: I take your point. But that question convinced me it really is just ignorant "extrapolation" from a misunderstanding/mishearing. I personally am inclined to interpret "If you'd have told me you were coming I would have checked the syntax more carefully" as a shortened form of "If you had* have told me..."* Ignorance is bliss, as they say - I couldn't possibly bring myself to say "If you would* have told me..."*, so it bothers me to think I "ought" to. – FumbleFingers Dec 31 '13 at 05:42
  • http://www.mentalfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/no_you_cant_has_cheezburger_410.jpg – Kris Dec 31 '13 at 06:40
  • In my neck of the AmE woods, I'd expect to hear "Haven't you got insurance?" -- and, perhaps "Don't you have insurance" or "Do you have insurance". But as for "Do you got insurance?", that sounds really off to my ear. Perhaps some nonstandard dialect would use that. (Perhaps this be an ESL/EFL tic where a student is blindly inserting a "DO" auxiliary to create an interrogative from the declarative clause "You got insurance".) – F.E. Dec 31 '13 at 07:02
  • @FumbleFingers - AmE speaker here, and we do not say what do you got. The loosest expression might be Whacha got there, which is understood to be equivalent to What've you got? Please, it's bad enough. – anongoodnurse Dec 31 '13 at 08:26
  • @Susan: Everyone here (and on my previous Q) seems keen to deny that anyone says what me and Lee think we're hearing. But presumably Philip Roth knows what he's talking about, and he transcribes it thusly in that link. Since he could have written "Watchya got", it seems reasonable to suppose he did it like that to indicate that his (admittedly, fictional) speaker was indeed "getting it wrong" in his head as well as his mouth. – FumbleFingers Dec 31 '13 at 14:15
  • Also, here is a link to the campaign in question, run by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education organizations (This is what led me to ask this question) http://www.doyougotinsurance.com/ I get the "riff" on Got Milk?, but they never say "Do you got milk?" like this campaign does. That's why I didn't think it was a duplicate originally, because they literally just say "Do you got insurance" as the URL. – Lee Jan 09 '14 at 21:37

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No, it should be "do you have insurance?" But ungrammatical forms are often used in marketing campaigns, as they are more memorable.

Chris Sunami
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