It needs cleared - grammar?

[Tittie]

Watching Homes Under the Hammer while baby naps and I noticed that one of the presenters keeps using the above way of talking, e.g.

It needs done (not 'it needs to be done')
It needs cleared, rather than it needs to be cleared

I realise I've heard it elsewhere recently, is this a regional thing? The presenter saying it has a Scottish accent. It really jars when I hear it

Prescriptivist linguists would hold that need+ past participle is "wrong".
Descriptivists, thankfully more and more in the majority, would (and do) note "oh, that's an interesting use of "need".
As the greatest linguist of our times (David Crystal- fab webchat with him yesterday afternoon) would say (in his non standard accent ) "if it's used, it's correct". Obviously, there are caveats to that but as the Tide Metaphor made famous by DC points out, language changes, things come, things go.

Giggorata That perhaps might have been because people of recent past generations were taught to read and write Standard English, not Scots. And Scots businesses and government departments and (until recently) Scottish media used only Standard English also. It was the language of 'educated' and professional people, and of people who aspired to get on.

There have been movements to 'rescue' Scots since the mid 20th cent, but Standard English is still predominant in many circles. Scots refuses to go away, however, as this thread has shown. And it really does have many 'correct' differences from Standard English: dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/a-language-or-a-dialect/

Gaelic-speakers were similarly discouraged - my elderly neighbour once told me how the teacher would hit pupils (aged 5!) for speaking Gaelic at school, even though it was only language they knew at that age. The school taught them only Standard English, not how to read and write Gaelic. The same would have happened in areas where Scots was spoken.

I'm quite embarrassed now, as part Irish I should've clocked it as a NI thing but I didn't. Good thread, I learnt something!

The Seeds I am sure that you are correct that language is changing all the time, but (and this is not at all meant to contradict your point) the 'need plus past participle' construction has been used for at least a century. And the fact - as previous poster said - that it has travelled to parts of the USA settled by Scots from the1700s onwards suggests that it is much older.

Just out of interest, for some really old ways to use 'need' - pre 1700 - see:
dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/nede_v

I'd never come across it until I met (and married) a Scot.

Not heard so much here in North Yorkshire, but very common across the border (to Scotland, not Lancashire where, I hear, they barely talk English...). I used to find it odd but now it hardly registers.

Some of the Northern English and Scots dialect words are similar though. Bairn for child and greeting for crying.

@Xiaoxiong

Both your ways sound wrong to me! I'd say "she gave it to me for my birthday"

This ^

I'm English living in Scotland and when I first met my Scottish DH I would tease him for not knowing the "correct" grammar. He would say "that needs done" and I would say "that needs to be done" or "that needs doing". After many years living here I now say "that needs done" when speaking to Scots and add in the extra "to be" when speaking to English/Americans or others. Fascinating to hear the history of it thanks @Florascotia2

It's grammatically incorrect, but my Geordie ex and his family used it habitually. (I found it incredibly grating!)

@florascotia2, yes, I know, sorry if I wasn't clear. My post was in response to the posters saying it's incorrect. It's not.

Re speaking Scots: we spoke Scots at home and among other children at school. We must have picked up standard English pretty easily, as we all spoke it naturally to our teachers. Though we gave it laldy on the few occasions we got to learn and recite poetry in Scots. I'll admit even now I have to remind myself to pronounce "crane" to rhyme with "rain" instead of as "cran" (Kran in German....).

Seeds

Quim what Seeds says is right; the usage is not incorrect. It's straightforward grammatical Scots, which started moving away from English (in pronounciation, spelling, vocabulary as well as grammar) over a thousand years ago. And other posters from northern England have said that the same pattern of words is used there.

Just like Scots and English south of the Border, Northern English and Southern English developed differences over the centuries - there is the wonderfully-named 'great Vowel Shift' , for example.sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html

Also, in northern English 'r' is more often rolled than in the south; some vowels are short (eg 'bath' which has the same 'a' sound as 'cat'') whereas in southern English they'd be long : 'baaath'. And so on, and so on. These aren't errors, just differences that have developed over time.

@florascotia2 My dad was one of those Gaelic-speaking kids that would be given the strap or tawse (not called the belt in Scotland usually) for speaking Gaelic at school. This was in the 1930/40s. They didn't have any English until they went to school (no TV then), but soon picked it up. They weren't taught to read or write it either. Although my uncle-by-marriage from Lewis was. But that's a whole other discussion!

It is used a lot here in Yorkshire, quite often about paperwork or emails.
It seems wrong to me because the idea of inanimate objects wanting or needing anything seems odd. A person might want or need to do something to them, but the object has no feelings or desires.

I've only ever seen it on Mumsnet and it makes me cringe. Didn't realise it was regional - but it still makes me cringe!

I have not come across people speaking in that way, it is odd.

jesstan It may of course be unfamiliar to you, but it's honestly not 'odd'. It's perfectly normal Scots - a laguage spoken in the northern British Isles for well over 1000 years.