A mouthful of English

Get is a very common verb in English, and it is used in several structures that have different meanings. When followed by an adjective, get often means ‘become’, or ‘start to be’. If you get angry you become angry, and if you get sick you start to be sick. The same meaning is expressed when get is followed by a past participle like dressed or lost : when you put on clothes you get dressed ; if you travel without a map, you might get lost – or become lost. These adjectives and participles are also found after be . The difference is that get expresses a change, whereas be describes a state: They got married in 2005, but they got divorced in 2010. They were married for five years. It ’s getting dark. It is dark. This is also the difference between be used to and get used to : I live in Scotland, so I am used to the rain. When I moved to Britain, I got used to driving on the left. (I wasn’t used to it before; I became used to it in Britain

In English, singular third person pronouns make a person’s gender explicit:             If Mary calls, she can leave a message.             If my brother calls, he may want to talk to me . Sometimes, we don’t know if the person we are talking about is male or female. To include both possibilities, we may say ‘he or she’:             If someone calls and I’m not here, he or she can leave a message. He and she are singular pronouns, whereas they is the plural third person pronoun. However, we can use they to refer to just one person, to avoid saying ‘he or she’:             If a customer calls and I’m not here, they can leave a message. The same happens with other third person pronouns and possessives:             If someone calls and they want to talk to me, tell them I’m busy.             Only one student had done their homework.