Grammar Point

A Little English with “The Animals”

In 1963, The Animals released the single “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place” to wide acclaim and popularity. Rolling Stone  magazine placed it at number 233 in their The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and it was also recognised by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

The song speaks to youth of the desire to move on, away from home and to create a new life that fits with with one’s ideals.

Check out the following music video:

Apart from its driving bass line and raw energy, the song offers some interesting grammar tidbits.

I’m sure you are all aware of modal verbs and the role they play in our everyday speech, but where does this song come in?

Marjatta Holt had described modal verbs like “have got to” in the following way:

Periphrastic modals are verbs that express the same meaning as modal verbs, but structurally they are like lexical verbs.

• be able to                      can
• be allowed to                may
• be going to                    will
• have (got) to                must
• be supposed to             should
• used to                          would

Okay. So “We gotta get out of here” is somehow linked to “have got to” – this is an easy assumption to make, but how does “We have got to” become “We gotta” ?

As you probably already know, English speakers are very busy people, so busy in fact that they rarely speak slowly. We consider some words very important, and others, not at all.

The verb “have”  in this case, is one of the unimportant ones. Just throw it away. You won’t need it any more.

Now we’ve gone from “We have got to” to “We got to”.

Hmm, it’s looking better, but it’s still kind of boring, not so much rock and roll, and everyone needs a little

Linking

• “Got” ends with the same sound that “to” begins with
• Why say the same sound twice?
• The Animals say “No way! We are going to hold the sound and save some time and be a little cooler by singing gotta.”
• Even cooler, the Animals don’t even say the /t/ sound, that’s too much work - better still to make it a /d/ sound so it’s more like “godda.”

The Animals + English = Fun (I hope).

• Now, you gotta keep studying.
• You gotta keep speaking.
• And, most importantly, you gotta keep rocking and rolling!

Note: /t/ to /d/ pronunciation rules:

• vowel + t + vowel = change the “t” sound to a “d” sound.
• For example: “I have got a headache.” In casual speech, you can pronounce this as ”I goda headache.”
• vowel + t + consonant = no change (keep the “t” sound).
• For example, “I have got problems.” In casual speech, you can say “I got problems.”