Gonna and Gotta

In informal English conversation, we often use shorter, versions of common word combinations.

One of the most common is ‘gonna’ - short for ‘going to’.

When we say the words ‘going to’ very quickly, they run together and sound like ‘gonna’.

So ‘Are you going to wash the car today?’ becomes:

B: ‘Are you gonna wash the car today?’

And ‘We are going to go home for dinner.’ becomes:

‘We’re gonna go home for dinner.’

We also shorten ‘got to’ so it sounds more like ‘gotta.’

Here, ‘got to’ means ‘have to’ or ‘must’:

So ‘I have got to wash the car today,’ becomes:

‘I’ve gotta wash the car today.’

And ‘I have got to go home for dinner,’ becomes:

‘I’ve gotta go home for dinner.’

Flickr CC: Bark