Re: USAGE: pronouncing "l", "needs washed"

> But the thing I don't get is that a few years ago, I first heard the
> construction, "that shirt needs washed" from my wife.  (I would say,
> "that shirt needs to be washed," or "that shirt needs washing."  To
> me, "washed" is not a nominal, and therefore cannot be used as the
> direct object of "needs," whereas "to be washed" and "washing" are
> both nominals.)
>
> Now I'm noticing it in the speech of almost everyone I know from the
> midwest.  But I *never* heard it, growing up in Michigan.
I heard that plenty growing up in eastern Ohio, though some of my relatives
would have said, "that shirt needs warshed."  Oh, how I miss my
grandmother -- she warshed, she sat on the davenport, she bought us pop, she
liked smearcase, she made kolaches, she swept (rather than vacuumed or
hoovered), she sat on the shore teaching me to suck... eggses... eggses it
is!  And she did a hundred other wonderful things that have nothing to do
with American dialects.

Prosit!

Jeffrey