How You Say Things

[Blue Canary]

So a lot of people in chat today found it weird that I say "The lawn needs mowed" instead of "The lawn needs to be mowed" or the "The lawn needs mowing."

So, how do you say it, and how do you say other things that you think people elsewhere might say differently?

 

[Moonstone]

I say "ya'll". I work in downtown Chicago so people often make fun of me for it.

 

[Aurelia]

Simple words that are used like "thank you" I still say Danke. Sometimes I say Yello except for hello

oh the ways how Texas changed my speech

 

[Collbard]

I'm from Louisiana and recently moved to California. So, I've learned that "y'all" "supper" and "get down at the store" are weird to some people.

 

[43ForceGems]

Well I think the biggest dispute is between "Soda" or "Pop". And then there's the strange "Soda Pop" kind of people Personally I've always called it soda. And also about the OP, I'd just say "The lawn needs to be mowed." Haha

 

[Sydney]

Apparently I always pronounce things wrong and I'm very slow at responding and making connections. I stutter a lot sometimes, and that's usually because there are so many things I wanna say and they all come out at once. I also try to neutralize my accent a loooooot, because I'm not a fan of having an accent unless it's one I like. Living around a bunch of rednecks, the dreaded "southern" accent rubs off on me sometimes, but I usually correct myself. I have nothing wrong with accents, it's just that it's sometimes hard to understand things when a person has a really, really thick accent.

 

[Clank]

So a lot of people in chat today found it weird that I say "The lawn needs mowed" instead of "The lawn needs to be mowed" or the "The lawn needs mowing."

So, how do you say it, and how do you say other things that you think people elsewhere might say differently?

Technically the first one is improper grammar, so yeah...

As far as what I do, I try to use proper grammar, but quite frankly I still say silly things sometimes...

 

[misskitten]

Haha, you should see the vastly different ways Norwegians talk depending on where they're from. I love it whenever I manage to confuse someone who isn't from my neck of the woods Not just dialects pronouncing things differently, but there are words heavily tied to different areas. Like "fun" which is "morsom", but where I'm from we tend to say "artig", and in the area I now live in, they tend to say "tidig" instead. Completely different words, not relating to each other, but all carrying the exact same meaning... lol

 

[Vanessa28]

I'm dutch so in my country we are saying things different of course. If you translate it literally we say: I'm going to home which is of course wrong grammar in english. But in dutch it is proper

 

[Wolf Sage]

I grew up in two very diverse places: Michigan and Louisiana, so you can probably hear a bit of both places in the way I talk. It's really hard to detect this on my own, though, because there's usually someone else who tells me these things. Conversely, I tend to say things differently than everyone else due to my thoughts being so internalized; like, I barely socialize with people enough to develop or adapt to a certain speech pattern, so I tend to talk overly formal and beyond my years, or so I've heard. (Chimera likes to call me "Mr. Fancy"...)

 

[DeletedUser9]

"The lawn needs mowed" is grammatically incorrect in terms of the English language. I dunno if you learned another language first or if it's just a regional thing like how certain regions pronounce words completely different -- I saw your blog about it -- and if I'm honest I'm not sure what the general opinion is among English professors and the like about accents (where you pronounce a word differently in a non-native language because you're used to speaking the way you do in your native language) and dialects (where you just pronounce it differently because of your area or other influences, not because of another language). Since dictionaries define strict pronunciation rules and grammar is taught strictly within a language, I would assume the idea is that accents and dialects, per their nature, are technically "incorrect", but as with anything as long as the intent is understood then it's not a big deal. Grammar's usually a lot stricter than pronunciation though. People pronouncing things differently than others over long periods of time can basically make it the norm, and that's "correct", but that's not really immediate; I can't go and convince a bunch of people to pronounce "crouton" wrong and then insist that our new pronunciation is correct because it's not (I actually do pronounce crouton wrong on purpose for my own amusement though :xd: ).

I can honestly say I've never heard someone say "the lawn needs mowed" as common phrasing in an area, or anything like it, so I dunno what the case with that one is. If it's a common thing then I'd just chalk it up as basically some form of slang that most people just aren't aware of. Correcting it is arguably like correcting people saying "cool" then (before that was officially considered a word anyway), which would be silly, but if people don't even know about it as a term then people are going to correct it simply because they don't know it's common, or common in an area. I'd say just realize that people aren't gonna know that saying it like that is from your area.

As for how I say other things differently than some people... I don't really know because I'm not really aware of any dialects that might have influenced me while growing up. I generally strive to pronounce things "dictionary-correct" when I can, but there's a few cases where I pronounce things differently. I use more Canadian-English dialect pronunciations in a few cases, such as the word "aunt". Then there's the example of me mispronouncing "crouton" on purpose because I think it's funny.