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Pittsburghese Expertise: Dropping “To Be”
- brandonmenc 10y agoIf anyone is interested in a humorous - yet frighteningly accurate - depiction of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia speech, watch the "Pawnsylvania" sketches from Kroll Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeY0mIn1K0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeY0mIn1K0
- steven2012 10y agoAs a side note, the OP's username "superchink" seems pretty offensive to Asians on Hacker News.
- ivanca 10y ago...which is also his email, which is also the username of the only person who wrote a definition for that word at urbandictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=superchink http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=superchink) ...yeah.
- superchink 10y agoYeah. Actually, I didn't write that definition, as amusing as it may be. I don't consider my username to be suited for Urban Dictionary, since it doesn't qualify as slang.
- ivanca 10y agoForgive us for not thinking your name was all about the vinasco super chink. http://www.applog.com/webstore-products/vimasco-super http://www.applog.com/webstore-products/vimasco-super
- superchink 10y agoI wonder if people consider that product offensive as well…
- golemotron 10y agoIs it offensive to you?
- hueving 10y agoYour comment seems offensive to people that don't like passive aggressive political correctness.
- superchink 10y agoI'm sorry you found it offensive. It's sort of a relic from my childhood. I don't get a whole lot of negative reactions to it; most appreciate the humor. But you're certainly entitled to be offended and I am sorry to hear about it. It was not my intent.
- untothebreach 10y agoMy wife talks this way all the time, and when we were first dating it really bothered me. Eventually I came across an explanation of the regional-ness of it on the internet somewhere, and I asked her if any of her family is from the Pittsburgh area. As far as she knows, they aren't, but they are from Columbus, OH, which is just down the highway a bit. I heard that Pittsburgh-ians also tend to use "yinz" for the second-person plural, which I find much better than a plain "you," and much, much better than "You all" or "y'all". (Though I'm now told it is not as commonly used as I assumed it was) Anyway, I love reading about the various ways american english has diverged, given time and distance.
- exception_e 10y agoAnother one is "yunz". People don't really use "yinz" and "yunz" too often though :(
- untothebreach 10y agoReally? That's disappointing. I'm going to edit my post a bit bc apparently I've been misled :-/
- blatherard 10y agoActually, you'll hear plenty of "yinz" in the greater Pittsburgh area, but more often in the outlying rural areas surrounding the city.
- dgacmu 10y agoConcur. It's not quite as widespread - what I've seen is that even quite a few non-natives tend to adopt "needs washed" after living in the region for long enough, but I don't hear yinz used unconsciously from people not born in the region. But there's plenty of yinz - and the city embraces its yinz-ness.
- lowmagnet 10y agoI always heard it round dahntahn. Norseide and Souside, mostly. In the Nordills, it wasn't as common, but my gramma sed things like worsh and spigot but she grew up dahn Etna an aht. Goodness that was hard to type.
- exception_e 10y agoI said "<jira ticket> needs deployed" when answering a question the other day at work and the person had to explain why that sentence is not valid. I grew up about an hour away from Pittsburgh and work/live in Pittsburgh now... what's funny is that Pittsburghese is more prominent just outside of the city.
- rplst8 10y agoIt's perfectly valid. It's just a non-standard construction. ...for American English I'll add.
- rhizome 10y agoIt's regional: http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/needs-washed http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/needs-washed
- hirsin 10y agoWhenever we were adding HTTP error codes to part of the IE F12 tools, I translated many of the strings from the IETF spec to our formatting, dropping "to be" at every possible case (as a yinzer naturally might). My poor content publisher rejected the draft, circling every grammatical issue and likely wondered if I really had a grasp on the English language. I wondered the same after seeing that much red cross out. It's tough being a Pittsburgher :-)
- mason55 10y ago> In fact, it’s possible that you are just now learning, from this article, that needs verbed isn’t the way everybody says it. I am from Columbus but moved to NYC awhile back. I am just realizing that at some point I switched from "needs washed" to "needs to be washed" and never even realized it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brandonmenc 10y agoI'm from Western Pennsylvania - an hour North of Pittsburgh - and can confirm. Interestingly, I've unconsciously learned that "to be" sounds proper, and have been code switching most of my life without even realizing it.
- alanh 10y agoI discovered this thanks to a chance encounter on Duolingo (which is based in Pittsburgh, coincidentally). This commenter is from my small hometown in western Pennsylvania, and I in fact knew her in real life: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/236814$from_email=comment&comment_id=11325709 https://www.duolingo.com/comment/236814$from_email=comment&c...
- Retra 10y agoI've been doing this lately. But only because I can't stand my phone's keyboard. Actually, if I'm not writing professionally or for public consumption, I do far more egregiously 'fun' things with my writing to make it more touch-screen friendly: Convenience: probably -> prolly __ing -> __n __ed -> __d I'm -> I and -> n something -> summat Purposeful misspellings: your -> yoor maybe -> mebes work -> werk word -> werd programming -> porkgramn morning -> mern And randomly drop unneeded words. "The car needs washd, prolly do next fri mebes if I not busy porkgramn summat fo werk."
- grahamburger 10y ago"Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding." [0] http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/01/28 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/01/28
- Retra 10y agoIt's hard to really jump on that line of thought without more information. Plenty of misunderstanding occurs because people make unwarranted assumptions about what some words have been employed to mean on the basis of familiarity alone. I know a few people who seem to communicate entirely in terms of cultural signals, propaganda, platitudes, and slogans. This is the easiest stuff to understand, but it also doesn't offer anything novel. If I'm going to say something mundane, I see no harm in asking someone to play a game to understand it. Even if you've failed to understand, there's no real consequence for it.
- yellowapple 10y agoThe idea of needs verbed being nonstandard is entirely new to me, and I live on the opposite side of the country from Pittsburgh, as has most (all, AFAIK) of my family. It feels right for things in my day-to-day work, like "the server needs rebooted" or "the bug needs fixed", though for other things, like "the code needs compiling", the needs verbing form feels more natural.
- tempestn 10y agoInteresting! Can you see any pattern distinguishing the verbs where the -ing complement form sounds more natural vs the -ed?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rplst8 10y agoSo according to the article, Pittsburghers and Western Pennsylvanians contstuct it the way those in England do. Huh, we speak Queen's English n'at.
- kazinator 10y agoPittsburghers' heads need examined.
- laksjd 10y agoThe article mentions that 'In some parts of England, you’d hear people use a phrase on the model of verbing: “The wine needs opening.”' Is 'needs verbing' really that uncommon? 'Needs fixing' seems like a very common expression that fits that pattern. I guess the article might be trying to say that in some areas of England 'needs verbing' is the default form but I'm still a bit confused by that sentence.
- SPBesui 10y agoIt really depends on the tense. I'm from Texas and "needs fixing" sounds completely normal (although it sounds even more natural as "needs fixin'"), while "needs fixed" is awkward as heck.
- petecox 10y ago-ing is interchangeable here in Australia with to be -ed e.g. "the roses need pruning" vs "the roses need to be pruned" Yet there's a formality typical in passive aggressive notes of using the 'to be -ed' syntax. Further, one only need apply 'to be' once with several actions "dishes need to be washed, dried and put away". Maybe -ed emphasizes the completed state vs continuous -ing focusing on the event of doing the action. e.g. opening sparkling wine with a popping cork is part of the occasion.
- tankenmate 10y agoIt's just a case of re-using the past tense for the gerund instead of using the present participle tense. Also, shouldn't the correct collective noun be Pittsburgher not Pittsburghese? The name Pitt and the noun Burgh are both Germanic not Romance.
- lowmagnet 10y agoThe dialect is Pittsburghese, not the people. Pittsburgher or Yinzer is the singular demonym. And the burgh in Pittsburgh is Scots, not Germanic. For twenty years, they even dropped the h from the end. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_Pittsburgh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_Pittsburgh
- tankenmate 10y agoScots is a North Germanic language with a smattering of West Germanic vocabulary; as opposed to English which is a North Germanic language with a large amount of West Germanic and French vocabulary). A fair number of scholars regard both English and Scots to belong to the West Germanic branch, but in my estimation the grammar of English and Scots is closer to languages like Nynorsk or older forms of Danish (which is where the Angles and Saxons came from). Vocabulary tends to be more flexible and adaptable, via loan words and the like, than grammar. You're right; the -er suffix is a reference to a person or thing in Germanic languages, my mistake. It should be Pittsburghisch or probably more likely Pittsburghish. Of course this is nothing more than my humble opinion; opinions like farts etc...
- iopq 10y agoIt's not dropping "to be", it's using a different participle. It's kind of like substituting "vaccinated" for "vaccinating". "To be or not to be" would still sound exactly the same
- Piskvorrr 10y agoTo me (Central European/Czech), this sounds like Russians speaking English: IIRC, in Russian, the verb "to be" is mostly implied (resulting in sentences seemingly without a verb), which they carry over when speaking other languages ("Hello, I here. My car needs fixed.").