Linguistic curiosities

[Data Cable]

This is kinda sorta vaguely aimed at gillian, but anyone else feel free to chime in... 'specially you Commonwealth types who probably think we already do a good job of butchering the Queen's English.

Where did the improper usage of a past-tense verb following the word "needs" come from? e.g. "My car needs fixed." (No, maybe your car needs to be fixed, or perhaps it needs fixing, but it most certainly does not "need fixed.") I can't say I recall ever hearing this abomination before moving here to NE Ohio, so I might have subconsciously assumed it to be a local dialect thing, but it seems I've also recently heard it in the national media somewhere.

Anyone else out there heard this, and does it make you cringe as well? This popped up now since I've seen boxes of parts at work with printed labels which read "Needs to be painted," alongside hand-scrawled labels reading "Needs painted," and I feel like smacking someone upside the head with an Oxford Unabridged. (assuming I was able to lift one)

[Jason]

I've never heard that usage and yes, it makes my teeth grate. It sounds like someone trying to do a cinema-chinese accent - Charlie Chan is the greatest detective in the world but he can't figure out how to use "to" and "the".

[gillianren]

At a guess (I don't think I've encountered it in person, but I know of that abominable usage), it's probably part some other language's grammar, most likely German but possibly some Scandinavian language. However, it may well also be that fine English tradition of elision, leaving things out.

[Ginnie]

My car needs fixed
Never heard language like that before. Where did immigrants to NE Ohio come from originally?

[PeterB]

I haven't heard that one before.

The American usage which grates my teeth is "off of" - "He got off of the bed". "Of" is unnecessary.

A slip of language I'm hearing more frequently everywhere is using "is" (and equivalents) instead of "are" (and equivalents): "There is few blocks of land left for sale."

[Data Cable]

ginniegatrit said:

Where did immigrants to NE Ohio come from originally?

Well, for a surprising percentage of the immediate population, Puerto Rico. But as for the multiple-generation residents, given the proximity to Pennsylvania (I'm less than 24 mi. from the border), I'd guess Dutch/German, which would follow gillian's theory. Our first landlord here was, in fact, Amish.

[BertL]

I think it is quite likely that the English "My car needs fixed" is translated from the Dutch "Mijn auto moet gerepareerd". Note again, that the sentence in Dutch the sentence would also be incorrect, officially, however sometimes sentences with such an incorrect structure are made by people who try to be really short and to the point (as a result of grumpiness), leaving away the verb "worden", which in this case would be translated as "to be".

My knowledge of German is not that great, but from what I've learned and heard, a similar (and again incorrect) structure is found in German as well. So all in all I think it's very likely that this "My car needs fixed" is an unlucky translation of an incorrect, but nevertheless sometimes used sentence structure found in both the Dutch and the German language.


All this language talk is giving me a headache, but it's never bad to share knowledge. Is it?

[Obviousman]

Never heard of that one, Mate.

[Jason]

No offense Bert, but I think it rather unlikely that American English might borrow bad grammar from Dutch. It probably has some other source.

[twinstead]

I moved to NE Ohio about 12 years ago and noticed a bunch of odd stuff being said. Getting used to 'pop' instead of 'soda' was bad enough, but I soon had to deal with my least favorite 'Clevelandism': The southern "y'all is bad enough, but the folks here like to say "yous".

"When are yous going to the concert?"

That hurts the ears every time.

[Bob B.]

datacable said:

Where did the improper usage of a past-tense verb following the word "needs" come from? e.g. "My car needs fixed."

Yikes, that's horrible! Sadly I have heard that usage before.

I was born and raised in north-central Ohio (Sandusky) and now live in southwest Ohio (Dayton). My gut feeling is that I haven’t heard that use of language very often, but then again I may be so conditioned to it that I don’t notice. I’ll have to pay more attention from now on to gage how often it’s used around here. Heck, I might even do it myself without being aware of it. I can’t say whether or not it’s a regional thing because I really don’t spend much time in other parts of the state. I haven’t lived in Sandusky for 26 years and I go back now only for occasional visits.

As a whole, the most common ethnic group in Ohio is German (about 25%) followed by Irish, English and African. I don’t know if Cleveland follows the state-wide trend or not. I know German is really big around the Sandusky area. It seems to me that Irish and Polish are fairly common in that part of the state as well.

[echnaton]

I don't know about the European immigrant background in NE Ohio, but in NW Ohio its largely German. NE is probable the same. I just spent a week in Mercer county and surrounds, and there are German names everywhere. I found some geocaches in various country cemeteries were the vast majority of names were German. The cities have a quite different population mix. The dialect up there has a few peculiarities that catch my attention when I visit, but diction and accent fare well when compared to Texas.

Bob, I though about you when driving through Dayton, wondering if you were at any of the construction site is saw. Perhaps on the I75 and I70 interchange. We were on family business and spent a few hours for relatives in the area.

[Bob B.]

echnaton said:

Bob, I though about you when driving through Dayton, wondering if you were at any of the construction site is saw. Perhaps on the I75 and I70 interchange.

There's a bunch of highway construction going on around Dayton at the moment -- I'm pretty sure both I70 and I75 are affected, though I'm not sure about that particular interchange. Fortunately I don't have to drive anywhere near it. I live in the southern suburbs and rarely have to drive more than 5 miles from my house or office. I usually try to avoid I75, though I do drive I675 occasionally. I rarely make it out to jobsites anymore, and besides, my company doesn't do highway construction.

[Ginnie]

Here is some others I found on the web:

Editing posts needs fixed/adjusted.
Something needs tweaked on your sizes in the forums
Farmers say Measure 37 needs fixed
What needs fixed? Find it and post it!
Underground Agorism: A Contradiction That Needs Fixed
32" TV Model IWT3206 needs fixed
I’m home! What needs fixed?

Wow. And there were lots more. Is it just bad english?

[Jason]

These are examples of written English on the internet. The writers probably wouldn't speak in this way.

I hope.