Learning English

Dan
Hi guys! Dan for BBC Learning English here with this week's Learner Question. Find out what it is after this.

OK! This week's learner question comes from Daniel. Daniel! Hey, buddy! Daniel, Daniel. Hey! Daniel in Argentina. He says, I would like to know please under what circumstances we should use wanna and gonna, and what exactly they mean.

Well, it's a good question, Daniel. These expressions are extremely common in informal speech, especially in American English. It’s important that you are able to recognise and understand them, but you probably won’t need to use them and you shouldn’t write them down. You should always write the extended form.

Gonna is a form of going to, and like going to it can be used for future predictions and future plans. It can be accompanied by the be verb, or not. And, it’s more common to omit the verb in 2nd person singular and plural sentences. For example, what you gonna do now? I’m gonna sit down and relax.

Wanna can be used with all singular and plural pronouns, except in the 3rd person – that’s he or she. We still need to use the ‘s’ with the verb in these cases. It means want to. I want to becomes I wanna. Again, the auxiliary verb here in the question can be omitted. For example, what you wanna do now? I wanna go home. My father wants us to have dinner.

Gotta is another example of condensed language. It comes from have got to. And it’s much less common in question forms, but when it does appear in a question, the have can be omitted. For example, what you gotta do this evening? I’m not sure. I gotta phone home and find out.

I hope that answers your question, Daniel. Thank you very much for writing to us. If anybody else out there has a question for Learners’ Questions, you can email us on: learning.english@bbc.co.uk. Please remember to include Learners’ Questions in the subject box and your name and where you’re writing from. We can’t possibly answer all the questions, guys, we’re very sorry. We just get too many, but we do read every single one. And for more information, go to our website: bbclearningenglish.com. That’s it for this week’s Learners’ Questions. Thank you very much for tuning in. I’ll see you next time. Bye.