A Quick Question for the Ricochet Grammarians

 

Many of my Ohioan peers and coworkers omit the verb “to be” in passive constructions, especially when assigning tasks. They’ll say, “These shirts need folded,” rather than, “These shirts need to be folded,” or, “These shirts need folding.”

Today, I asked my Latin professor about this. She speculated that the form may be a “Germanism,” a bit like the infamous question, “Come with?” (In the 19th century, central Ohio harbored a sizable German population.) According to my German-major roommate, though, the German language, like English, permits only the infinitive (“needs to be folded”) and gerund (“needs folding”) in this situation.

Where, then, did “need folded” (and its variants) originate? Why would “to be” disappear from the passive? Is it merely linguistic laziness? Or an example of language’s natural tendency to simplify?

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  1. kylez Member
    kylez
    @kylez

    RightAngles:I’ve never heard of this barbarism in my entire life. I do not approve! No one must ever speak this way again. Like Aaron, I’ve studied linguistics. In Chicago, where I’m from, there are a lot of Germanisms such as “Come over by my house” instead of “to,” due to the German bei. (I’ve never said that, but I’ve heard it a lot) But there is just no excuse for “this shirt needs folded.” In fact, I can’t even look at that sentence ever again. I’d go read the link someone posted, but I don’t think I would recover from it.

    Did you see the sign in the first link in #18? “Does your car need detailed?” It’s like linguistic time travel.

    • #31
  2. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    RightAngles: In Chicago, where I’m from, there are a lot of Germanisms such as “Come over by my house” instead of “to,” due to the German bei.

    I’ve been trying to break myself of habits like that, at least in writing. My hometown in Texas was settled by Germans, so perhaps that’s where it comes from. But I find myself constantly adding useless prepositions of location like over, under, up, down, etc.

    Ex: “I’m going to drive up to Kim’s. Let me know when you plan to head over.”

    There’s not even a strict pattern to it. I’m as likely to say “down” as “up” in the same phrase; either works. It’s similar to my bad habit of attaching “as hell” to everything.

    • #32
  3. Fred Cole Inactive
    Fred Cole
    @FredCole

    RightAngles:I’ve never heard of this barbarism in my entire life.

    “Barbarism” accurately describes western PA.

    • #33
  4. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Aaron Miller:Apparently, there’s a word for this: demonym.

    And people from Mobile (pronounced mo-beel) do in fact use “Mobilian”, if they don’t prefer to identify themselves by as Crimson Tide fans.

    We should just call’em movers.

    Aaron Miller:

    RightAngles: In Chicago, where I’m from, there are a lot of Germanisms such as “Come over by my house” instead of “to,” due to the German bei.

    I’ve been trying to break myself of habits like that, at least in writing. My hometown in Texas was settled by Germans, so perhaps that’s where it comes from. But I find myself constantly adding useless prepositions of location like over, under, up, down, etc.

    Ex: “I’m going to drive up to Kim’s. Let me know when you plan to head over.”

    There’s not even a strict pattern to it. I’m as likely to say “down” as “up” in the same phrase; either works. It’s similar to my bad habit of attaching “as hell” to everything.

    And thus the whitewashing of our language continues, unabated.

    • #34
  5. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Tonya M.: I was born and raised about 40 minutes north of Pittsburgh, and this is exactly what people will say. “The dishes need washed, the kids need picked up, and the dog needs walked.”

    In Mobile, they would say “The dishes need to be warshed.”

    Tonya M.: My high school English teacher would lose his mind over such local habits of speech. “Pop is what you do to a balloon, people. It is NOT something that you drink!”

    My first memory of this sort of culture shock was when, as young kids, we visited my mom’s relatives in Ohio. “Let’s go uptown and get some pop!” I had never heard of “uptown” or “pop”. I think I asked for “a coke” and then confused them by clarifying I wanted a Dr Pepper. And, being from one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, the idea of walking “uptown” (downtown) just to get a drink was mind-boggling.

    • #35
  6. Kephalithos Member
    Kephalithos
    @Kephalithos

    She: Here’s more information that we ever wanted to know about this. It does mention the Scots English formation, about 1/4 the way down. This article from the Boston Globe says essentially the same thing.

    Fascinating. Thanks!

    • #36
  7. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    She:It’s a Pittsburgh, and Western PA formulation as well.

    That’s the region I associate it with. I have Ohio cousins who don’t use this construction, and Pittsburghers who do.

    What I find interesting is how quickly it spreads. A few minutes around the Pittsburghers and I find myself saying things like “The car needs washed.”

    • #37
  8. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    RightAngles:In Chicago, where I’m from, there are a lot of Germanisms such as “Come over by my house” instead of “to,” due to the German bei. (I’ve never said that, but I’ve heard it a lot)

    Ah, I picked that up from my Chicago cousins then.

    • #38
  9. Matt Bartle Member
    Matt Bartle
    @MattBartle

    I never heard “needs washed” and I live in Western New York, which is not far at all from Western Pennsylvania! I guess it stayed south of the border.

    “Come with” is common here, but I never heard it when I lived 60 miles east.

    • #39
  10. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Also, you people who use “coke” as a generic term for pop/soda? You need to stop that.

    • #40
  11. Kephalithos Member
    Kephalithos
    @Kephalithos

    The manager who most frequently uses (abuses?) this construction hails from Washington County, Ohio, which borders West Virginia. The county’s eastern half was settled largely by Pennsylvanians (presumably of Scotch-Irish extraction), native Scottish, and Irish.

    Interestingly, my other coworkers — largely affluent and well-educated by today’s pitiful standards — have, almost without exception, adopted “needs folded” (a matter worth a separate post).

    • #41
  12. Typical Anomaly Inactive
    Typical Anomaly
    @TypicalAnomaly

    As a lifer from said land of barbarians who speak that which is an abomination to the ears of sensitive souls such as Fred and RA, I must recommend earplugs should you travel to our area. For this, dear reader, is only a taste of the grammar squashing carnage which awaits you when you travel outside the manufactured bubble of civility imposed by education and non-natives.

    Make your way to establishments filled with the locals, and you shall be treated to a local dialect. The dropping of the infinitive in passive constructions using need and want is not nearly the most frequent linguistic deviation you will hear.

    Local color of this kind is blended with other transgressions of the tongue which are both native and imported. It is a true patchwork of constructions, pronunciations, omissions of sounds, alternate sounds, alternate accentuations and outright insertions of words that simply don’t exist in the written form. It makes for great fun among my children as they identify these when employed by friends and extended family.

    • #42
  13. Lucy Pevensie Inactive
    Lucy Pevensie
    @LucyPevensie

    Susan Quinn:I must be hanging out with the wrong people. Never heard such constructions as acceptable, in CA or FL. Or maybe you’re hanging out with the wrong people.

    Speaking as someone who only spent a couple of years in Pittsburgh, but who remembers those years with great affection, if you’re not hanging out with Pittsburghers, you’re hanging out with the wrong people.

    • #43
  14. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    PHCheese:Being from Pittsburgh we call people from Ohio, Ohisians therefore don’t ask me.

    Ohio?

    In Wisconsin, we pronounce it Iowa.

    • #44
  15. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    DrewInWisconsin:Also, you people who use “coke” as a generic term for pop/soda? You need to stop that.

    They need beated, too.

    • #45
  16. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Never heard the construct from the OP, but growing up in  Milwaukee, the one I heard a lot was “Make out the light” (for “turn off the light”).

    There was a local car dealer for many year, Ernie Von Schledorn, who’s advertsing slogan was (and still is, even though he’d dead)  “Who do you know wants to buy a car?”

    • #46
  17. Kephalithos Member
    Kephalithos
    @Kephalithos

    Typical Anomaly: It makes for great fun among my children as they identify these when employed by friends and extended family.

    But your children, presumably, don’t employ such colloquialisms. They know that “needs folded” is nonstandard.

    Nonstandard speech is, unless used to patronize, almost always unconscious.

    • #47
  18. Liz Member
    Liz
    @Liz

    Brian Watt:

    DrewInWisconsin:Also, you people who use “coke” as a generic term for pop/soda? You need to stop that.

    They need beated, too.

    I do that, but why?

    I’m from the southern mid-Atlantic. Is it just a general Southernism?

    • #48
  19. JustmeinAZ Member
    JustmeinAZ
    @JustmeinAZ

    This thread has me laughing out loud.

    And I have lived from D.C. to the South to New England to the west coast and I have never heard this construct either.

    • #49
  20. Typical Anomaly Inactive
    Typical Anomaly
    @TypicalAnomaly

    Kephalithos:

    Typical Anomaly: It makes for great fun among my children as they identify these when employed by friends and extended family.

    But your children, presumably, don’t employ such colloquialisms. They know that “needs folded” is nonstandard.

    Fortunately there are grammar nazis among the older kids. No one, including a parent, is safe from this corrective force loosed upon my family.

    • #50
  21. The Dowager Jojo Inactive
    The Dowager Jojo
    @TheDowagerJojo

    Fred Cole:

    RightAngles:I’ve never heard of this barbarism in my entire life.

    “Barbarism” accurately describes western PA.

    What?  Really?  Why would you say such a thing?

    • #51
  22. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    DrewInWisconsin:Also, you people who use “coke” as a generic term for pop/soda? You need to stop that.

    No coke.  Pepsi.

    No Pittsburgher.  Cheeburger.

    I couldn’t resist.

    • #52
  23. TempTime Member
    TempTime
    @TempTime

    “These shirts need folded.”

    Had to read that sentence a few times to figure out why it seemed odd to people … sounded perfectly normal to me.

    Must be because I grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania.  I would add, at least where I lived the sentence “Those shirts need folded” was not usually just a comment about the shirts, rather it was frequently an indirect/passive way of asking/telling a person to fold the shirts.  It was something just less than being told to do something, more of a suggestive comment.  But then again, it all depended on who was saying it.

    For instance if my mother said “Those shirts need folded”  we all knew it meant she wanted those shirts folded now.  However, if I was visiting a sister while she was doing chores and she remarked to me “Those shirts need folded”.  It’s a way for her to ask me to help fold the shirts without actually asking me (that is, not impose on me).  That way, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to just ignore the shirts and not fold them.  After all she did not actually ask me to fold the shirts, did she?  See? Easy.  It makes perfect sense.

    • #53
  24. Liz Member
    Liz
    @Liz

    The Dowager Jojo:

    Fred Cole:

    RightAngles:I’ve never heard of this barbarism in my entire life.

    “Barbarism” accurately describes western PA.

    What? Really? Why would you say such a thing?

    Ha! Good question. In the past I’ve been similarly inquisitive about the intention or meaning of Fred’s remarks. Perhaps you’ll have better luck than I in getting an answer.

    • #54
  25. Old Buckeye Inactive
    Old Buckeye
    @OldBuckeye

    I know I often speak this way, and I grew up in NW Ohio (but not where any of the pins are on that map that She linked to). My ethnic heritage is strongly Irish, though, and working-class Irish at that. Not sure the Kennedys would use this lingo.

    • #55
  26. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    So does Toys “R” Us become We Be Toys?

    • #56
  27. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    So which one of you is going to scrawl “They need beaten” under a Democrats name on the ballot?

    • #57
  28. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    DrewInWisconsin:

    RightAngles:In Chicago, where I’m from, there are a lot of Germanisms such as “Come over by my house” instead of “to,” due to the German bei. (I’ve never said that, but I’ve heard it a lot)

    Ah, I picked that up from my Chicago cousins then.

    As many Germans as there are in Wisconsin, I doubt we need to blame that on Chicago.

    • #58
  29. Fred Cole Inactive
    Fred Cole
    @FredCole

    Liz:

    The Dowager Jojo:

    Fred Cole:

    RightAngles:I’ve never heard of this barbarism in my entire life.

    “Barbarism” accurately describes western PA.

    What? Really? Why would you say such a thing?

    Ha! Good question. In the past I’ve been similarly inquisitive about the intention or meaning of Fred’s remarks. Perhaps you’ll have better luck than I in getting an answer.

    Merely a statement of fact.

    • #59
  30. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Just another small gripe. “I’ve got” what is wrong with saying “I have”. How about “these ones”? G-d Almighty, how about saying “these”. Now I know why nuns carried rulers.

    • #60
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