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I watched a Harry Potter's movie in which they say "Right smart bird you got there, Mr. Potter."

But I think "Right smart bird you've got there, Mr. Potter." is correct, because I think 'have got' indicates Harry's possession of that bird.

What is the answer? And what does 'there' mean? Does it just refer to Potter's house? Or is it meaningless?

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This is colloqiual British speech.

  • "Right" in this context means 'very'.
  • "There" is used to indicate that you mean something currently in someone's possession, or in view.
  • "Smart" can mean 'intelligent'.

If I was to re-write this in more formal language it would:

That's a very intelligent bird you have, Mr.potter.

In my version, "there" is redundant because I've begun the sentence with "that is", which also points to something in their possession or in view. As I said, this is colloquial British speech, usually associated with the 'cockney' dialect, or possibly northern dialects such as those from Lancashire or Yorkshire.

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  • Going by the title, the questioner is asking about the syntactic pros and cons of including the (possibly, abbreviated) auxiliary verb have between subject you and "primary verb" got, which you don't seem to have addressed.
    – FumbleFingers
    Dec 24, 2020 at 14:42
  • @FumbleFingersReinstateMonica Going by the fact the OP accepted my answer, I'd have to disagree. The positioning is largely irrelevant as it is colloquial speech. There's lots of reasons why it shouldn't be written or said this way, but people do.
    – Astralbee
    Dec 25, 2020 at 9:47

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