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Which is more correct use of the words? And what sounds better to a native English speaking person?

  • Fetch from system?
  • Get from system?

The context is setting the locale in a web application.

EDIT: The information is retrieved from the browsers API which gets the information from the operating system. So technically it should be Get in my opinion but I was thinking from an end user perspective.

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    What is the context of the application's action? To me, fetch implies a round trip (request for data and receiving data) while get just says the application receives from the system (which may or may not be the result of a request). Commented Nov 27, 2019 at 12:41
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    This is entirely context-dependent. What is correct for one protocol or programming language might be incorrect for another.
    – nick012000
    Commented Nov 27, 2019 at 12:49
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    @nick012000, it's in the UI so the end user will not know about the protocol or programming language.
    – Tim
    Commented Nov 29, 2019 at 9:55

2 Answers 2

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Fetch and get are both transitive verbs. They require an object noun phrase.

  • He fetched the butter from the pantry.
  • She got a letter from her brother today.

Without the object, they're ungrammatical.

  • *He fetched from the pantry.
  • *She got today.

They don't mean the same thing, either. Fetch has a very specific meaning:

  • go somewhere else, pick up something, and return with it

Get, on the other hand, has many different meanings, though only the one meaning 'come to have' (or 'cause to have') is involved here.

The OQ doesn't provide sufficient context for an answer -- just for starts, what is to be fetched or gotten, for what purpose, from where, and by what means? -- but I would suggest that a complete sentence is more informative than a verb phrase with an imaginary object. It is never wise to believe that your readers have exactly the same imagination you do.

And I wouldn't recommend either fetch or get, either. One is rare and dialectal, the other is overly common and multiply ambiguous; and they're both ungrammatical without objects.

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    I'm thinking implicitly that the application is the noun. And your examples are in past tense. I looked up the definition and I think it's easier to apply in real world examples than digital examples. Personally I think Get sounds and logically is more correct. But I wanted a second opinion. Thank you for your time.
    – Tim
    Commented Nov 29, 2019 at 9:53
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Depends. I would use fetch because it sounds nicer, but you could also base it on what it exactly is called you are doing.

For example, get would be logical if you were dealing with a GET request.

And who do you mean by native? Anyone? I'm not a native myself but depending on who from where you ask, you might get different answers.

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    Native; someone who grew up talking the language in a country where English is the primary language. I thought the technical aspect should not be to important as its the end user who will se the text on a button.
    – Tim
    Commented Nov 29, 2019 at 9:47

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