Judging from this fanwriter's specific tics I'd guess she's from Appalachia

[conuly]

The trouble is that her* characters are English.

Now, most people with the needs washed construction have no idea it's regional, and I can see how both "come with" and the plural prounouns who all and what all snuck in there without notice (but not any form of a plural you, so I guess she caught that one herself!) - but I'm a little surprised that nobody ever told her that "drug" is a nonstandard past tense.

(Why don't people with "needs washed" ever recognize that it's a regionalism?)

* Well, you know what I mean. The characters in the fanfic.

Comments

[topaz_eyes]

People will write in the English they're most familiar with. I was lucky that my first beta was from the UK and stamped out my worst regional tendencies. But I don't know if fandom has that same dedication to canon verisimilitude these days with Brit-picking and/or American-picking?

"Needs washed" is not limited to Appalachia in the US though. The heat map in that article looks at the similar construction "My car needs fixed," and it's not just Appalachia that accepts using the construction.

Needs Washed from the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America

(Another place where "needs washed" is common is Canada, despite what that article says. You'll hear it in Nova Scotia (especially Cape Breton), rural Southwestern Ontario, and parts of Alberta. Any areas populated by large numbers of Scottish immigrants would likely use it to some degree, especially if those areas were historically rural and/or isolated.)

[conuly]

"Needs washed" is not limited to Appalachia in the US though.

No it's not. However, it's the specific combination of features that makes me think Appalachia in particular. I could ask. Experience has taught me that many people take a nonjudgmental and dispassionate question of "Are you from here?" as an implicit criticism of their speech, which is absurd but I can't fix that. Trying to fix it doesn't help.

[chasing_silver]

I'm from rural Southwestern Ontario and never heard "needs washed" until I moved to the Midwest USA. Can't speak to the others, but we didn't say "needs washed" and I lived in several different parts of Southwestern Ontario.

[topaz_eyes]

I'm from that area too--it was a common enough usage where I used to live.