A bank’s LED sign: “Mortagage need refinanced?”
An invoice: “Tech was called out for water heater. Found needed reset.”
A localite, noticing some Asian honeysuckle that ought to be cut back: “It needs done!”
[Need + past participle] is a regionalism, found in many places, including downstate Illinois.
Related posts
“Need rescued” : “Needs studied” : “Need worked”
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A [need + past participle] day
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comments: 2
“It needs done!”
The missing "to be" is hard on my ears. I guess it all depends on what yer used to.
Your links were good, carrying the theme forward. The 2010 comment from normann on David Hackett Fisher's book and 'the current "red state/blue state" divide' got my attention. I think I might follow up with that book.
And I missed your recent Needs studied post (because I misinterpreted the title) until you linked to it here. But it links to “A Downstate Illinois Dictionary” which was fascinating. The
Older Philadelphians, for example, still say “wooter” for “water”
thing especially caught my eye (ear?) because I knew about that one. It was a key element in the "Manhunt: Unabomber" TV Series.
“It needs done” and a couple three others are still novel to me, and I will admit it, I like them all. They remind me that I’m in a particular place not of my own making and that’s just fine.
I’ve read about (and heard) the Philadelphia accent. And I remember that the Unabomber’s brother noticed a detail in the manifesto that was something of a shibboleth: the logical but unidiomatic "You can’t eat your cake and have it too.” The Unabomber was/is apparently something of a pedant about language. There’s even a “scholarly” article — not worth the time, trust me — likening Strunk and White to the Unabomber.
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