Hello, and today I'm going to talk to you about having something done.
Now, in English, there is a structure that we use when we talk about other people doing things for us. And that is have something done. If you go to the hairdresser's, well, you don't cut your own hair, do you? You ask somebody else to do it for you. And that person is the hairdresser. So afterwards, we say,
I went to the hairdressers today, and I had my hair cut.
So the structure is then:
have + the object (my hair) + the past participle of the verb (cut).
To have one's hair cut.
It's possible as well, to use another verb - get - to get your hair cut. So,
Today I went to the hairdresser's, and I got my hair cut.
I suppose if there is a difference, it's that get is less formal, perhaps it's colloquial, it's more colloquial than have.
I mean, there are a lot of things, aren't there, that other people do for us. If, for example, your car needs fixing. Well, then you take it to the garage. And you have your car fixed by the mechanic. You can say that by the mechanic. But it's pretty obvious who fixes the car if you take it to the garage. So today,
I took my car to the garage and I had it fixed, or, I got it fixed.
Now there's another context in which we use this structure have + object + past participle. And that is when something unpleasant happens to us. You know, for example, you're walking in the street one day and somebody takes your handbag and runs off with it. Well, afterwards you can say, oh, a terrible thing happened to me today.
I was walking along the street, and I had my handbag stolen.
Did you hear there was a robbery the other day and the police came and,
A policeman had his arm injured during the robbery.
So that's another unpleasant thing.
And then finally, there's a structure where we would use get. And in this context, it's when we, well, when we deliberately persuade somebody to do something for us. I don't know if you remember when you were at school. Perhaps you're still at school now. Anyway, there was always somebody there who tried to get you to do his homework. Oy, you, titch! Come over here, right? I want you to do my homework for me, all right? You know, the school bully, so they get you to do their homework. So the structure is different here, isn't it? It's,
to get someone + an infinitive
with to
to get someone to do something.
So we could say, the school bully always tried to get me to do his homework, because he was a bit stupid. So I suppose that this use of get plus the infinitive coincides or can coincide with the first structure we were looking at, to have something done. So you could say, for example, you know, about your house, oh, the house just needs painting, we must get it painted. Or we must have it painted. So you could say,
We'll get the painters in to paint the house.*
So you can also say then, with a very similar meaning,
We're going to have our house painted by the painters,
which is very similar to we're going to get the painters in to paint the house**.
Okay, that's all from me for today. Until next time, bye.
*In fact, have is possible here too. The structure is have + object + infinitive without to.
I had John finish the report for me - I didn't have time myself.
We had the painters paint the house.
Is there a difference between the get + person + infinitive with to and the have + person + infinitive without to? Well, they may be interchangeable. However, my school bully example prefers the get structure because we could also say the school bully made me do his homework. Where strong coercion is involved, the get structure is often preferred.
**Or, get the painters to paint the house. The extra and perhaps confusing 'in' here refers to 'in the house'. We often use it when builders, painters etc. come to our house to do some work. The English often say, We've got the builders in = the builders are doing work on our house.
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