The demise of “to be” before verbs

[Ted22]

This is something I never came across in my first 30+ years of life, but now in the last couple of years it seems to be everywhere!

”He needs rescued” is an example I just saw. Instead of “He needs to be rescued.”

”It needs washed”

“The cat needs fed”

Etc.

Has anyone else noticed an increase in this? Surely “needs to be” OR “the cat needs feeding” is correct.

I am sure that this has always existed in certain regions, but is it now increasingly used across the UK?

I can't stand it. But apparently it's completely normal in Scotland.

It sounds so clunky to me.

It's a common dialect feature here in the north east, and not a new one. I'm a southerner who moved up here decades ago and I noticed it from the beginning of my time here. I suspect the OP is just coming across more speakers from diverse parts of the country online than she would offline.
It's also possible that since it shortens the amount of typing that needs to be done it has caught on a bit online and become more popular regardless of region.

I wouldn't regard it as a target for pedantry, just as a simple variation. The version with the infinitive is a bit bizarre and cumbersome when you think about it!

Completely normal in Scotland.

"It needs washed" sounds more correct to my ears than "it needs washing".

Yes I’ve noticed it, it just doesn’t sound right to me and really grates.

my biggest gripe though is the dropping the have from “ I have done the washing “ to “ I done the washing”

This. It's the accepted, historic informal usage in many parts of the UK like NI and Scotland. Not a new thing by any stretch. Just the same as "the car needs washing" and "the cat needs feeding" is the accepted, informal usage in other places and sounds awful to me, and I only heard it for the first time in my 20s and did a double take (the person was English, and usually spoke well, so it took me aback that they had formulated a sentence so incorrectly until I found out it was a dialect thing). The only one I'd ever write down is "needs to be fed/washed".

🤦 Not everything that's linguistically unfamiliar has "crept over from the USA". If you read the thread you'll see it's long established informal usage in parts of Ireland and Scotland.

You just didn't see it a lot growing up because you didn't read much casual stuff written by Irish or Scottish people, you were mainly only familiar with your local informal language. Everything you read was formal. Now that we communicate online we're exposed to more variation.

Online, I don't think we need to search further for an explanation than it saves words.

Tedious, but it needs typed 😂

Yet alone? I thought the expression is let alone?

Scottish standards have been different from English standards in the language for hundreds of years. There isn't, and has never been one English standard. I get frustrated on these threads because people without a decent knowledge of linguistics make proclamations about other people's usage which is entirely unjustified.

See PP that explains it's the opposite. It's from an older form of English, commonly used in Scotland. See also Halloween traditions that people say have come from America! Most started in Scotland and/or Ireland and went over there with immigration and made it to England last.

I started a thread last week about 'going Tesco'. To use the vernacular, it's jarring.

Ah, the fact that is is the norm in Scotland would explain why it is also normal here in the north east of England, where Scottish usages have quite a few influences.

I can't emphasise enough how arbitrary and bizarre the use of the infinitive form is in formulations like "he needs to be fed." (Does he really need this abstract form of the action, unbound to any subject or tense? If he does, then he is fucked, because that can't actually happen.).
I'm not suggesting that it is remotely wrong, of course, only drawing attention to the fact that what is familiar to us feels "right", not because it has any logic or intrinsic superiority but simply because it is familiar.

Why would it be a bit dim to use a regional variation?

All those who say it sounds jarring and dim 🙄, do you realise that there are probably phrases you say that sound completely normal to you that are grammatically incorrect and sound jarring to others?

One example is from my husband's family. They say "give it me" rather than "give it to me". Acceptable to them but sounds weird to me. I don't judge it, just accept it is a dialect variation.

Because where I live it's not a regional variation, its just people copying others from reality tv or tik tok who have a poor grasp of basic grammar.

I blame the Government. They started it all with their 'at Conference' malarky.

I don’t think it’s culture!! Disclaimer I am not referring to where it’s used as dialect.

There is only one right way and it’s my way.

used to be a Grammer pedant until I realised what an ableist, classist, xenophobic hobby it was that is not back up by current research into social science, etymology or linguistics.

Then I just let other people get on with using their language however they want and my blood pressure went down too

winning all round.

As demonstrated in the first post, with OP thinking "needs feeding" is correct!

We have „I aren’t“ instead of I’m not where I work. I aren’t doing that.

Exactly this.

It’s not standard in my dialect but I like to read and hear it. I think people who’d like to enforce a standardised form of English on the world should ask themselves whether they also have a dialect (yes) and why they think their dialect is the one that everyone else should use.

I'm Scottish, never really used "to be" with verbs. The "going Benidorm" variant I first noticed when I moved to Essex 1999. I took it to be Essex speak.

But it is a regional variation. The fact that it's spread beyond the regions where it was originally used doesn't make the people who have adopted it 'dim'. It's normal, because that's what language does, and has always done. Usage changes. Dialects mingle. Especially on the internet, where you can't hear people's accents, so you might adopt a particular phrase without necessarily realising it's Scottish, for example.

As a linguist I find this snobbery about regional variations and the evolution of language weird, distasteful and very class-bound. It's interesting to learn about regional dialect in the languages I teach, and it wouldn't occur to me to regard a southern-French phrasing as inferior or to think a Parisian was a bit dim if I heard them use it.

As others have said,standard use of English here in Scotland. That doesn't make it wrong.

A similar example might be the Irish use of " bring" where I would use " take".

It's rife where I live in the Home Counties. I loathe it.