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A friend of mine has noticed something I say differently to move people. Most would contract the sentence "we have not done" into "we haven't done". I turn it into "we've not done". This seems to be correct as well, but people have told me its odd or wrong. I'm I incorrect or just different? If it is of any importance I am from the south-east of England. Any information on this will be kindly received.

Thanks in advance

brasshat
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userX
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    You're not "wrong", but if you normally contract *we've* rather than *haven't*, you're seriously out of step with common usage. Whatever - in any specific case it's just a matter of opinion which to use. – FumbleFingers Feb 14 '15 at 15:14
  • @FumbleFingers Thank you very much. In my mind it feels more normal to contract we've, plus it's quicker to say. Surely that makes it more appropriate than contracting haven't in spoken english. – userX Feb 14 '15 at 15:23
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    If it works, it doesn't matter whether it's seriously out of step with common usage or not. In fact, it might be a good thing to make it distinctive. – John Lawler Feb 14 '15 at 16:08
  • @FumbleFeatures I think you need a better pair of search items. I get 500 000 Google hits for "we've not finished yet" -lyrics -video -patti as opposed to 26 000 hits for "we haven't finished yet" -lyrics -video -patti. Neither these results nor yours fit in with my perceptions that they're both idiomatic. Admittedly, the ratio is 8 : 1 in favour of 'we haven't' if I swap verbs. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 14 '15 at 16:50
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    @John: Perhaps I've not been as clear as I should have been :) In any specific context about the most you could say is contracting *I've* rather than *haven't* might feasibly be very slightly more "formal/fancy/classy", and you might consciously exploit that tiny difference. But if you always choose the "less-favoured" version I think eventually other people would start to notice. And they'd probably think it's you who are "distinctive" (read, weird), rather than just your choice of phrasing on one specific occasion. – FumbleFingers Feb 14 '15 at 16:57
  • @Edwin: I think Google Internet searches are much more skewed towards falsely inflating estimated totals for text strings involving particularly common words, and that your results mainly reflect the fact that the word *not* is exceptionally common. This effect is much reduced (or perhaps doesn't occur at all) in Google NGrams. – FumbleFingers Feb 14 '15 at 17:00
  • @FF I've got to concede this one. The authoritative research mentioned by Alex B in the previous thread (which I've not come across before) shows that the usage I prefer is by far the less popular. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 14 '15 at 17:28
  • The Corpus of Global Web-based English (GLoWbE - since 2012) has 16633 hits for "We have n't" and 5 for "We ve not" (4 from Nigeria and 1 from Kenya). The corresponding numbers from COCA (Contemporary American English 1993-2012) are 6542, and 1. COHA (Historical American English) an BNC (British National Corpus) have no instances of "we've not". – Colin Fine Jun 30 '15 at 09:34

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