In the opening chapter of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain presents an interesting conversation that reflects human nature. Tom tries to persuade his friend Huck to join him in his plans to form a band of robbers and to take captives much like pirates used to do. Huck asks Tom what pirates do with the captives they take, and Tom answers, “Ransom them.” “Ransom? What’s that?” asks Huck. “I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I seen it in books; and so of course that’s what we got to do,” explains Tom.
https://odb.org/1997/09/09/quote-misquote/
Is “seen” a typo?
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It’s colloquial for “I’ve seen it”. The ‘ve’ part is omitted similar to ‘You see him last night?’ for ‘Did you see him last night’?
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In Tom Sawyer, we find that Tom doesn’t care for school very much, as he sees it as an interruption of the adventures he would rather be having. Huck Finn very rarely goes to school at all. So it is natural that their English usage would not always be up to the accepted standard.
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Also like Gone there?, Done it?, Eaten twice. and so on.
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