I"ve learned that we can’t use the verb to forget when we mention the place where we left something. For example: “I’ve forgotten my books at home” should be “I left my books at home”. But then I saw this sentence in a book “When the bus arrived at the bus stop, I realized I had forgotten my lunch at home”. According to the online dictionaries Oxford and Cambridge, this use of the verb is wrong. Would this use be accepted in a more informal setting? Does that have anything to do with the language evolving, since languages are living organisms?
I never realized “I forgot it at home.” was incorrect. You can’t really replace it with “I left it at home.”, it would have to be “I accidentally left it at home.”
Looking at the ngram viewer, it looks like it has been used in books off and on:
As a non native English speaker, I learned this way and got a little confused. This is from Oxford dictionary on line:
You cannot use forget if you want to mention the place where you have left somethingI’ve
This is from Longman dictionary online: orget your keys/money/cigarettes etc
I had forgotten my cigarettes again, left them in the living room. ldoceonline.com/dictionary/forget
In the UK, the sentence ‘I’ve forgotten my books at home’ would definitely be considered very strange. To me it is incorrect.
To use ‘forget’ I would say:
I have forgotten my books. They are at home.