To be, or not to be - language usage I'm not used to

[andrewducker]

There was a link I shared a while back about places where Scottish and English varied.

And I knew there was one which always bothered me, but I couldn't remember what it was. And then I remembered just now!

The usage I encounter sometimes is "The shopping needs done", whereas I grew up with "The shopping needs to be done".

I've mostly encountered it without "to be" in Scotland - but I'm sure that usage varies across the country. Anyone got local experience about this variant usage?

Comments

[cmcmck]

In the black country where we are now it's: Shoppin' needs doin'. 'The' as indefinite describer at the start tends to get dropped for a sort of little glottal sound.

His mum always used 'messages' rather than 'shopping'- very central belt, that.

And as you say, we both grew up in the same area so that was the one I knew there too.

[f4f3]

"Your bed needs done!" is something I used to hear from my mum, growing up in Glasgow.

[liv]

My native southern England dialect has either 'task needs to be done' or 'task needs doing'. I picked up 'task needs done' in Dundee and most of the time I can't remember which form I use, unless I'm specifically thinking about it to answer questions like yours.

[mellowtigger]

I grew up in West Texas, and the language in my white middle-class family (not well educated) was the same as your native form.

[cosmolinguist]

It happens in different kinds of British English and varies in other Englishes too, it's famous in USian English. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/needs-washed

[aldabra]

I think of "the shopping needs done" as Glaswegian. I grew up with "the shopping needs doing".

[naath]

"the shopping needs doing" or "I need to do the shopping" or "I need to shop" (Essex with explicit "no estuary in this house" and Cambridge university, the town accent is different and not mine to the extent that I can't comment on it although I graduated more than a decade ago and live here) and "the shopping" here is groceries, or at least stuff from a supermarket, not other things one might shop for.

[haggis]

Yep, that's familiar to me from growing up in Falkirk.

[cmcmck]

Other half's from just up the road in Stirling. :o)

[white_hart]

The only time I encountered that usage growing up was in the Beano ("Gnasher needs clipped!") which certainly lends weight to the idea that it may be Scottish usage.

[alithea]

It is definitely common usage in Dundee so I'm unsurprised it featured in the Beano!

[snippy]

To me that construction seems like a translation of the French "il faut."

[andrewducker]

Apparently it's very similar to the Gaelic construction too.

[cellio]

The dropped infinitive e.g. "the car needs washed" is very common in western Pennsylvania, where I grew up (and live). We came here when I was a child and my sister, two years younger, talks like this but I don't, so I guess I'd already passed whatever the formative age is. Here in Pittsburgh I've heard it attributed to a Scottish construct; we had significant Scottish immigration in the late 19th century. But I've also heard it described as an Appalachian dialect, or attributed to Germans. I have no sources for any of this, but maybe I'll ask on Languages & Linguistics (unless you beat me to it :-) ).

[andrewducker]

Discussion on Facebook indicates that it's word ordering that Gaelic uses, and common in Scotland and Ireland.