When you move up to the pre-intermediate stage in your learning there are some tricky bits of grammar that are very useful to learn. One of the main pre-intermediate obstacles is the confusion between ‘you have done it’ and ‘you have got it done/you have had it done’.
Here’s how they work.
Done It
We normally use this to express things we have done ourselves.
“My homework? I’ve done it. I did it yesterday but I have forgotten to bring it today.”
Got It Done/Had It Done
‘Got it done’ is more British and ‘had it done’ is more American. These are used to say that you made a request to somebody else to do something for you.
“I got my hair done at Vidal Sassoon and had my nails done at Selfridges.”
Complications
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Got it done by oneself
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Who did it?
Sometimes got it done is used to describe a hard task that you did.
“I got all of my housework done yesterday while the kids were at school.”
It is structured like the ‘got it done’ that indicates third-party involvement but the speaker in the above sentence did it all by his or herself.
A lot of my students confuse things when talking about hair cuts.
“Marc, you cut your hair!”
“No. It only looks like I cut it myself. I got it cut a cheap barber.”
However, the next exchange is definitely correct.
“Marc, you shaved your beard!”
“Yes, that’s right. I got tired of it.”
In the last sentence, I did not ask someone to get tired of my beard, that ‘got’ is the one that means the same as ‘became’.