I’m with you on this one Chessic Sense. I’m also a native-born Yinzer living in D.C. I left Pittsburgh at a young age though, and never thought I retained any of its dialectical nuances. However, recently a friend pointed out to me my frequent use of the “needs Xed” construct. I never even knew that this was not “standard” American English; it sounds perfectly normal to me, and implies “needs [to be] Xed”. To my ear “needs to be Xed” sounds somewhat stilted and should only be used to strongly emphasize to someone that someone (the person spoken to) should perform said action on the object (i.e. “The car needs to be washed” sort of implies to me that the speaker is telling the listener to wash it.)
And what is it about this board with all the language prescriptivists?
Personally, I probably still have the flat “ow” sound in my “downtown”-like words. I’m not working too hard to change that. My family wouldn’t allow “yinz” and we never did have “warsh” as part as our family dialect so there’s nothing glaring in my accent.
I know that “needs washed” is incorrect and avoid using forms like that in business writing and other professional communication.
Like most people, IMO, I change my language with my audience and my intentions. I think that a lot of dialect that people think is substandard can be altered intentionally by the speaker. My father used to have a clerk in their office who had an excellent speaking voice. You could tell, he said, when an old friend would call - she’d almost immediately drop to a “less educated” sounding accent and patois.
This isn’t about you, so let’s just get that straight right now. I fundamentally don’t give a shit what your habits are.
If I know and hang around someone who does something incredibly grating, whether it’s their use of some phrase, smacking their gum, strumming their long fingernails incessantly on the desk, or whatever, I’ll let them know how annoying it is. Probably in a lighthearted way at first. Hopefully they’ll stop doing the thing driving me up the wall. I would expect other people to tell me if my biting my fingernails or saying “dude” or whatever causes them grief, and I’d do my best not to intentionally annoy that person.
But if someone I don’t actually know uses the phrase in passing, it would grate on my ears, but I doubt I’d do anything about it. I’d love to smack the people who pop their gum in public places a good one, but somehow I’m strong enough to resist the impulse.
It’s the “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” effect. There are those here who know a little bit about grammar. They think that makes them linguistics experts and people to be respected.
I’ve seen people on this board stand on their heads to avoid splitting infinitives, or recasting sentences in the silliest ways so there’s no preposition on the end.
Dare to step out of line and they’ll fall back on the “You’ll never get a job! HAHA!” defense. Because if they are obsessed with your word choices, the whole world has to be. If they’ll judge you for it, the whole world will.
It’s funny to watch prescriptivists flail around so desperately. What’s especially funny is the exceptions they’ll make if you have the right accent. Oh, you sound British? Well, then you get to say whatever and we’ll get all swoony and say it’s sexy.
And it’s all about whatever they can grab onto. If their choices are the popular ones, they’ll argue from popularity. “Most of us say X, therefore X is what is acceptable.” But then when their choices are the unpopular ones, they’ll say that popularity doesn’t matter and decry those unwashed, ignorant masses who just didn’t have such a superior education. “Just because most of you say X doesn’t make X acceptable!”
It could be the fact that consistent syntax and common word usage makes it easier to understand and communicate with other people, which is the point of having a language. Or to put it this way: you will speak to me in a manner that I understand, or I will not engage in spoken communication with you since it will be fruitless for both of us.
In a discussion about UHC elsewhere recently, a Welshman of my acquaintance, a pretty level-headed person I count as a friend, made a comment about the “bloody surgeons.” He was speaking clear British English – but he got some doubletakes from the Americans involved.
There’s nothing wrong with dialectal usages – but there is a standard to which formal writing in American English is held, and it doesn’t allow room for dialectisms (at least outside reported dialogue). It is descriptivism, not prescriptivism, to maintain that certain usages are not standard in formal written English, however much they may be used in colloquial speech. And when schools teach “good English,” they are simply teaching children who can speak colloquial English for their region perfectly well, what is the national standard for good writing in American English – not because of a misguided “right and wrong” standard, but because the same descriptive standards that say “It’s me” is good syntax but “Me is going” isn’t, say that dialectalisms and colloquialisms have no (or a very limited) place in formal written English – not because it breaks prescriptive rules, but because a consensus of those who write and edit formal English do write things one way and not another.
Hm. Have you ever worked in HR? I have, and using “incorrect” language (written and spoken) was one of the major factors in determining whether an applicant would get a (first/second/third) interview, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Even now, when I talk to our HR department about applicants, they tell me they throw away resumes with grammatical/spelling errors right off the bat, or that in interviews the people were “nice, but sounded stupid”. Why this is news to anybody is beyond me. Once again, I have to ask: do you consider requiring employees to dress in business suits to be elitist? Employers are looking for professionalism in the way you conduct yourself. In your personal life, nobody really cares how you want to talk, though, as Ravenman pointed out, some regionalisms and slang terms can be grating to certain people.
If you substitute “Dog needs to be washed outside” you get the same ambiguity.
Yes, I agree that glaring spelling and grammatical errors in a resume or during an interview will get you downgraded. But “needs washed” isn’t a grammatical error.
This is like the people who insist that “ain’t” isn’t a real word. It sure as hell is a real word, and everybody who speaks english understands what it means. It’s informal, but so what? I wouldn’t use it in a job interview, but again, so what?
I’m a vice-president of a manufacturing company. I’ve done hiring and I’ve done firing. I’ve handled sales for nearly ten years. I’ve talked to people around the country and around the globe.
If I ever run into difficulty, I’ll be sure to let you know.
So you’re saying professional verbal and written communication is not an issue for you when considering who to hire? Or are you just trying to impress me with your power?
Actually, the older you get, the harder it is to make changes to your dialect. Children can more easily learn to be bidialectal, just as they can more easily learn to be bilingual. Adults, on the other hand… not so much.
Except, in many cases, different dialects are mutually intelligible, even when certain constructions or phonetic elements sound “wrong.” That’s what makes them separate dialects and not separate languages.
You have no problem understanding “needs washed,” you were just taught that “needs to be washed” or “needs washing” is right.
Too, there are issues with people having more trouble understanding someone even when they expect that the person is going to be speaking a non-mainstream dialect. In one of the books I linked above, they cite a study that was done with a recorded lecture and a slideshow of photos of a person presenting the lecture. When the presenter was Asian, people reported having problems that didn’t exist when they were played the exact same recording but displayed a white presenter.
“She hat” is **exactly **as grammatically correct in the English language as “her hat.” However, the former is AAVE, and the latter is MUSE. The **only **difference is that the former is spoken by Black Americans, and moreso by poor ones than rich ones. So, explain to me how making a value judgement solely based on **who **speaks a dialect is **not **racism or classism?
1.) “Her,” not “his.”
2.) This isn’t a “liberal, postmodern” claim. This is basic linguistics. This is how language actually works, instead of how you assume it works through the narrow lens of your own experience (which, by the way, includes your grade school English classes, which taught you what was “right” and what was “wrong.”) Go read a book sometime. I recommended two good ones already.
$5 says none of them ever bothers to even glance at the books I suggested. God forbid they learn they’ve been wrong all these years.
There’s another problem. Written language != spoken language. Learning spoken language is natural and inherent. Written language is artificially created. Equating spoken and written language is like saying driving a car and walking are the same thing: sure, they’re both forms of transportation, but one was artificially created, and they require very different rules.