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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?
Published in General
Also here in the South, or in Texas anyway, nobody ever says “a half hour.” It’s always “thirty minutes.” And they never have their picture taken. They have their picture made.
Lies! I say half-an-hour. I didn’t realize “the flu” showed my dialect, though.
What really shows it off is “yer” instead of “your”, “pore” for “pour” and “poor”, and “I figure”. Also, Ts are generally softened to Ds, so “bottle” comes out “boddle”.
Got it. Eye roll. Well we can’t all have the good fortune to live in Schenectady.
Technically, that’s not softening, it’s substituting the voiced for the unvoiced. Do you do that for Ks and hard Cs by making them Gs?
Actually I say “the” flu too. I was raised up north by two Texans so I have inconsistent speech patterns. I also say “the” for mumps and measles, but not cramps. Most others where I grew up said “I have measles,” but that always sounded odd to me.
Hmm… I don’t know. Maybe, Arahant.
When you say words like “soccer” amd “picker”, how do you divide the syllables? “socc-er” or “so-ccer”? Does the second syllable start with the K sound or follow it?
Sometimes I skip consonants, I think. There’s a slight break / pause in the word where the consonant would be.
When I say “take”, I don’t really vocalize the K. It’s more like the word ends with my tongue in the K position, but without the tongue release and breath that finishes the K sound. Only if I follow “take” with “it” do I finish the K, because I slur words together.
Most Americans these days probably have inconsistent speech patterns because most relocate at least once in life, if not many times.
My parents grew up in Mobile and I’ve spent a lot of time in that area, so I think my dialect is primarily a mix of southeast Texas and coastal Alabama.
But TV and movies must factor in as well, right? Universal media have probably introduced foreign words and pronunciations to regional dialects. I should watch a John Wayne film once a week just to stay sharp!
That reminds me…
I asked my siblings and parents once how they divide the syllables in “Miller”. Is it “Mill-er” or “Mil-ler”. None of them had a clue what I meant, no matter how many times I tried to demonstrate the difference.
Only poets could care.
Mil-ler of course!
If I pronounced it that way too, I’m sure I wouldn’t have to repeat myself so often.
That’s called a glottal stop. (Or a glo’al stop, if you do that sort of thing.) It’s heard in the Cockney dialect, too.
Mill-uh.
Or should I say, Mist-uh Mill-uh?
You have to split a double consonant!
Not necessarily. Or, should I say that it depends on what you are doing with it. If it’s at the end of a line and you are hyphenating it? Perhaps. But here are the interesting entries my dictionary has:
mill·er – the guy who works in a mill.
Mil·ler, Arthur US Playwright, etc.
Mill·er·ite Follower of some weirdo named Miller.
mill·er·ite a mineral.
The · represents where to break them by syllable.
West Coaster – Washington State and California. Never heard such constructions period.
“Scotch.” Now you’re just making me mad.
Awesome.
around here in ny you hear, “moun’ain,” “Mar’in,” for words like “mountain” and “Martin.” It drives my son Martin nuts…
“Wis-con-sin,” or “Wi-scon-sin”?
Funny thing – when I lived in Rochester, NY, people going to drive on the Thruway would “take 90.” In Buffalo they say “take the 90”.
“Fold those shirts.”
“Cut that meat.”
When I was learning, the above was incorrect. I mean it’s incorrect if you’re writing. Maybe dictionary definitions are breaking syllables according to pronunciation? I think I’m old enough to be your mother (or at least your babysitter ha), and I guess if the Oxford comma isn’t being taught as gospel anymore, maybe this rule has been thrown out as well. Somebody just put me on an ice floe and set me out to sea. This is what I found a moment ago (grammar rules, not dictionary pronunciation rules):
Syllable Rules >> Syllabification Examples
Syllable Division Rules
Are two (or more) consonants next to each other?
And then there’s the politicians’ locution, “The American people want these shirts to be folded.” And the Nixonian locution, “Shirts were not folded.” And the Yoda locution, “Folded these shirts need, ummmm?”
That’s a good example, Mama Toad. I skip the T on those.
Wis-con-sin
Around Houston, I generally hear “take 45” rather than I-45 or Interstate 45. Is there any regional difference as to whether people prefer “street” or “road”?
Incidentally, I read somewhere that only people in Houston and one of the snowbird states refer to a “service road” as a “feeder”. Migrations make for interesting blends.
In Wisconsin, they say “WusGAAAAANsen”
“These shirts need to be folded” has the passive infinitive “to be folded”. (Passive infinitive subjunctive, I guess?)
It is common in English to drop the words “to be” from the passive infinitive. For example, “I want these shirts to be folded” can be said “I want these shirts folded”.
The W. Pa/East Ohio usage “needs washed” is consistent with this form, so it makes perfect sense grammatically. Moreover, one native user here mentioned that the phrase is specifically a polite form of “I want these shirts [to be] folded.”
This form may be from the Scottish, according to a reference someone helpfully provided. If so, I wonder if the choice of Scots speakers to drop both “be” and “to” is influenced by their own language? Scots Gaelic has no infinitive (thus, drop “to”). The passive past can be indicated by a verb suffix; could this mean that there is no separate word like “be” in forming the passive in that language (thus, drop “be”)?
I asked my mom, who was born in Pittsburgh with a Scottish father (name of Milne) if she had hear the usage. Surprisingly she had not, and thought it sounded funny. She said it sounds Amish (someone else here mentioned the Amish connection.) If so, would we find a similar grammatical logic in the German spoken by the Anabaptist immigrants who became the Amish and Mennonites? If so, why doesn’t the form show up where Germanisms do (Milwaukee, Cincinnati, eg.)?
Definitely Wis-con-sin, since the con and the sin are the important parts for that state.
I’ve only heard Alistair Begg (pastor originally from Scotland) use this formulation, and then only rarely. Maybe it is a Scottish thing.
Growing up in NW Iowa we used “too yet” as in, “after supper I have to wash the dishes, and then I have to fold the laundry too yet.” It makes perfect sense to me but I try never to say it anymore.
An Amishman would never say, “My truck needs washed.”
He would say, “My horse needs groomed.”