Right- I lived for a while in Pittsburgh, where it is common, and even catch myself saying it. Spoken, it seems normal. But so does the word “ain’t”. It is incorrect in formal written use.
Methinks thou hast it! (If we’re going to talk dialect). It looks to me like a misreading of the plural of the noun need as the third of the verb need.
Words become so overused in advertising that they lose any meaning. ‘Solutions’ is a common one: I’ve even seen places that offer Sandwich Solutions instead of just a variety of Sandwiches.
‘Needs’ has been a slightly earlier one. It started from a supermarket basis of All your needs supplied here. That obviously makes ‘needs’ a noun. Then come more specialised terms like All your motoring needs catered for. This again makes ‘motoring’ an obvious qualification on ‘needs’ - not just any old needs, motoring needs. But look again: it’s actually ambiguous in a way most English speakers would not think to use there, it just could be read All [that] your motoring {noun} needs {verb}.
English doesn’t like possessives. They are the last of the old formal grammar and we are moving from the kind of language that says The sun’s heat or Calor solis to one that says The heat of the sun and Le chaleur du solei. One way of doing that is to return to a very ancient form that puts turns the possessing noun into a qualifier.
Maybe 50 years ago it would be common enough to advertise All you pet’s needs supplied. Today, instead of All the needs of your pet supplied we will see All your pet needs supplied. We have either turned ‘pet’ into a qualifying adjective or we have invented a compound pet-needs that is still written as two words. And it has become ambiguous in the process. (And that is ambiguous too, as is often used as a joke: just which of its processes has it become ambiguous in and what are they?)
So now we have All your dog needs supplied which could mean either All your dog-needs supplied which amounts to All needs supplied for your dog or All [that] your-dog needs - supplied where ‘needs’ has become a verb. It’s a small (and ignorant and redundant) step from there to All your dog needs trained by comparison with Your dog needs training and Your dog needs to be trained.
These last two constitute a war between North and South England. Strictly speaking, forms like Training were originally nouns and it still comes through in expression like The going was rough. Again, you could change that to It was rough going and then it is not clear whether ‘going’ is really a noun or some kind of verb - in It was hard making that, ‘making’ is a verb but in The making of that was hard it is a noun.
This needs to be done (Southern) and This needs doing (Northern) are both accepted as ‘standard’. That is not true in other cases. I want this done is Southern standard but Northerners will usually say I want this doing. Just occasionally it can be ambiguous: if somebody says I want this washing do they mean they want it washed or they want their washing back rather than have it washed? Especially where ~ing words retain use as nouns does *She wanted the cottage painting * mean that she wanted her cottage to be repainted or that she wanted the artwork featuring rural accomodation?
This Dog needs trained looks like a new dialect form developing for the same sort of thing. It’s overlapping the two very close ideas of The room needs to be cleaned and I want the room cleaned via the used of ‘needs’ in the sense of ‘requirements’ in other related contexts.
Here’s a pretty good article on the construction from the Boston Globe. It is particularly associated with Pittsburgh, but it is attested in informal writing throughout the country (the author finds usage of it in California, Idaho, and Florida, among other places). I’ve heard it in speech in Central Illinois, including by college-educated people (one of whom was Phi Beta Kappa). This latter fact probably should scotch the idea that it is an uneducated form–although I would be surprised to see it in formal, edited writing (and would perhaps consider it inappropriate in that context).
I would pay special attention to the remarks by Stanford linguist Arnld Zwicky (of Language Log fame) in the concluding paragraphs of the article.
I don’t think that’s it at all. “Car needs” would be things like a tire gauge, oil changes, and maybe some plush upholstery for the seats. But when I say “the car needs washed”, I’m not saying to wash all the accessories for the car; I’m saying to wash the car itself.
EDIT: That was in reply to Jerseyman, not Kimmy.
This is very interesting. I have relatives in the Pittsburgh area, and used to visit there every few years as a kid. While I remember the “you-uns” construct, I can’t ever remember seeing or hearing what’s being discussed in this thread. Guess I just wasn’t paying much attention.
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
I guess in Pittsburgh, that part of the play reads:
Or not, that is the question.
Well I knew it was Pittsburghese from my wife, who would tell the story of her first year college roommate and friend who spoke that way, and when my wife made of her always responded with “Yeah, and which one of us placed out of Freshman English?”
My wife is my source that it comes from the German influence. Anyone with any more definitive source for its origins? Not that I don’t trust my wife …
I’m mystified by this. I’ve lived in Ireland all my life, and never once heard an Irish person use this form. “This needs doing” is normal, but “this needs done” is completely strange to me.
I think **jerseyman **has missed the point. This idiom is used with all direct verbs, not merely “need”.
She’s from Belfast, if that makes any difference. Otherwise, I don’t know what to tell you. She did it constantly. “This needs fixed”, “my clothes need cleaned”, etc.
I called her on it a couple of times but she didn’t think there was anything unusual about it. It’s a transatlantic phenomenon, apparently.
Ahem, that’s yinz.
Strangely, perhaps, though the “X needs blanked” construction is prevalent here, I rarely hear “yinz.” “You all” or “all you/ya” would be much more common.
If naming it were left to me, I’d refer to this construction as “abbreviated infinitive.”
Can one recommend somebody to do something, or only recommend that somebody does something (or advise somebody to do something)?
Indeed.
Really? I’m surprised at that, I hear it often. As Xylo suggests it does seem to be somewhat more common in the North but I hear it from southerners sometimes too.
Lived in New England for 25 years, and never heard this kind of phrase. Moved to Maryland (in the DC area) for a year, and heard this at least once a week. It definitely sounds very odd to an outsider.
I asked some people why they were saying it that way, and they just looked at me funny.
Leave it to people to create a third form when there are already two acceptable ones.
a) The car needs “to be” washed.
b) The car needs “washing”.
Why on Earth would a third option even be conceived (except through ignorance?)
“Rett” up.
While the second-person-plural pronoun is pronounced (approximately) “yinz”, it’s spelled “you’uns”, a contraction of “you ones”. And in my experience, it’s more common in the rural areas of western PA than in Pittsburgh itself.