Needs done

[dollybird]

I have started seeing this more and more recently, i.e 'if X is on holiday, the work still needs done'. Where has this come from? It sounds totally wrong to me.

Scotland.

It's regional, not wrong.

Ah, ok, every day's a school day. I just hadn't ever heard it until fairly recently, and now see it all the time.

It's wrong in the sense of correct grammar. It's regional slang.

I see "needs gone" regularly on pages where people are selling stuff and I'm in the Midlands.

Interesting @KateMiddletonsExtensions because I’d have thought ‘needs doing’ or in that case ‘needs getting rid of’ was the normal usage in at least a large part of the Midlands.
It really is getting everywhere!

Normal Scots usage. Not slang.

Oh I see this everywhere

Needs sold
Needs done
Needs gone
Needs cleaned
Needs finished

Sounds wrong to me too

As pp; Scottish.

I always read the rest of the post as though I know they’re Scottish after that (obviously I don’t!). Not technically correct but doesn’t feel as incorrect as it’s regional.

Normal usage doesn't stop it being slang, because it doesn't make grammatical sense.

It's not slang, it's regional variation.

Spread from Scotland, the NE, and the Midlands into much of America with immigration.

Corpus studies have tracked its development.

Lots of perfectly grammatical utterances "don't make grammatical sense" if you only think of grammar reductively as being rule driven. That sort of thinking is very basic and old-fashioned. Grammar is studied inductively these days, not deductively and, as David Crystal says, "if it's used, it's correct".

No, it's not standard. Much of what we say and write isn't. But only those suffering from a hefty dose of Dunning-Kruger are so absolute about "rules". Linguists not so much.

Where in the Midlands?

.....as David Crystal says, "If it's used, it's correct".

So if I say 'we was' when I would previously have said 'they were' that's fine, because I used it.

These descriptivists can be very dogmatic.

I hate it. It may be regional in origin but now everyone uses it.

Normal usage doesn't stop it being slang, because it doesn't make grammatical sense.

Since when has the definition of slang been 'something that doesn't make grammatical sense'? In any case, being grammatically correct and making sense are not at all the same thing.

Is it? I've never heard it.

The rules are useful in codifying a standard version of a language, and that standard is useful because it's neutral/unmarked, and is easier for those with dyslexia or for whom English is an additional language and sometimes those who use assistive technology (that's why MN has always championed the use of standard English - it's not some random adherence, it's to keep the site as accessible as possible)

But subgroups of speakers will use language differently; and it's usually not at all difficult for native speakers to follow, and in many cases any speaker can work it out.

What you might write when you are publishing posts that feel like a chat is likely to be different to when you are writing something at work. So of course you'd expect to see more slang and reflections of dialect on chat sites. But, one hopes, not to the extent of making it harder for those who are less fluent or have dyslexia