Sprecken Sie Pennsylvaniaish?
Written by Cindy O. Herman
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Ah, summertime in Central Pennsylvania. The sun is shining, the grass is growing, and so, finally, the lawn needs mowed. The porch needs swept, the house needs painted, and the windows need cleaned, and if nothing in all of that sounds funny to you, why, you're my kind of people.
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When my friend went off to college, an English professor had his students laughing when he talked about Central Pennsylvanians saying, "The clothes need washed."
My friend hooted right along with the rest of them, and then later, in a hushed voice, told me all about it. Well, we just looked at each other. It took a moment for the astonishing truth to sink in: We'd been saying it wrong all this time! The clothes, in fact, need "to be" washed.
Who knew?
To be or not to be, that is the dilemma, because sometimes you need "to be," and sometimes you don't. For example, do you need it when you say, "The porch needs a good scrubbing?" No, you don't. But you do when the porch needs scrubbed. Now, where's the sense in that? And it can get worse.
"My son's hair needs cut," is grammatically bad enough, but in Central Pennsylvania we've somehow gotten the crazy idea that hair is singular and hairs is plural, which is true enough, of course, unless you're talking about cutting your hair. Nobody cuts one hair. But around here, just to be clear, we cut our hairs.
Thus, you have:
"My son's hairs need cut."
"My hairs need washed."
And the ever-popular: "Oh, I like how you have your hairs cut. Mine need trimmed, too."
Now that I think of it, it's probably a little bewildering to outsiders, especially when talking about things that need washed. I wasn't going to mention this, but ... a lot of people around here say, "warshed." I don't know why.
But it makes things just a little weirder when you hear someone say, "My hairs need warshed" or "The table needs warshed." Of course, instead of simply warshing something, we usually redd things up while we're at it. "Redd up" is another little Pennsylvania Dutch expression that, loosely translated, means, "clean it up, ship-shape."
And believe me, when it's time for spring cleaning, lots of things need redd up.
And, OK, as long as we're airing our dirty laundry, I'll just come clean here and let it all out: A lot of us have a funny way of saying "clothes," too. For some reason, we drop the "s" and call them "clothe," as in, "The clothe need to be washed."
Only we would say, "The clothe need warshed."
It's funny that we call clothes "clothe," when we say bath instead of "bathe."
You may think you've heard wrong when your Central Pennsylvania neighbor says, "I just bath'd the baby," but you didn't. They said "bath'd."
And they meant "bathed." It's all just part of the joy of growing up " and talking " here.
I think one thing is very obvious, however, and that's the importance Central Pennsylvanians put on cleanliness, what with all this warshing and bath'ing going on. Sure, we may have a few wacky ways of "sprechen sie-ing," but we're good and clean, our houses are swept and scrubbed, and when our lawns need mowed, we get right to work. And we don't waste time worrying about whether they need "to be" or not.
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