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A friend of mine corrected my sentence but I couldn't understand it. Just hoping someone can explain it properly for a non English speaker.

My sentence is:

"Finally your passport GOT ready for pickup"

My friend (native English speaker) corrected it to:

"Finally your passport IS ready for pickup"

Or "Finally your passport got processed and is ready for pickup"

Why can't i use "got ready" in the above sentence just like in sentences

"We got ready for bed", "Alpha team got ready to play"

Thanks in advance.

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    Because it is ready now. Ready is a state, and get ready means an activity leading to being ready. That comes before be ready. Like your friend said, it got processed (past) and now it is ready (present). May 29, 2015 at 0:11

3 Answers 3

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Finally your passport GOT ready for pickup

Because you passport is not a person, it can't do anything of it's own accord.

Finally they got your passport ready for pickup

Here "got" applies to "they", being the people you processed your passport application and made the passport available for pickup. Using "got" is common in the UK but may seem vulgar in Australia/US, although is technically correct.

Finally your passport became ready for pickup

This is how I would write sentence in it's original form.

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  • Thanks very much. It really makes sense now. Can't mark it as an accepted answer because of low reputation. May 29, 2015 at 7:42
  • Thank you all for marking it as an accepted answer. My reputation is still low so can't mark it as an accepted answer. I accept it as the best answer. Jun 1, 2015 at 9:46
  • I am really sorry for earlier comments "My reputation is still low so can't mark it as an accepted answer". I just realised to mark it as an answer i was clicking at the wrong place (vote up) and was getting warning because of low reputations. Finally i found the right place to mark it as an answer. Thanks for your patience and your answer. Jul 8, 2015 at 20:48
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It's two different meanings of get (past: got)

Get + past participle is a colloquial form of the passive, fairly close in meaning to be + past participle, but with the added implication that the process is complete. So get eaten = be completely eaten; get processed = be processed (completely).

Get + adjective of state (including a present participle) means put oneself in that state, and can only be applied to volitional subjects: get ready = make oneself ready.

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Not only "passport got ready" suggests that the passport itself took the necessary steps to reach the collection stage, but "get" is a word which is often overused in this context. Please use a better word of one is available.

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  • thanks for your answer. Can you please give me an example of better word? "Please use a better word of one is available." May 31, 2015 at 15:50

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