Tempodivalse:"X needs Y-ed", with the "to be" removed, is fairly common in my experience.

Just out of curiosity, where are you from? I grew up partially in Eastern PA and I didn't once hear this construction until my sister went to Penn State....

We are fairly open to different forms of American dialects in the US - especially since we are a very mobile country. In my life I have lived in New England, California, Iowa, Indiana, Penssylvania, New York and now Florida. Language plays less of a role in displaying one's social class here than it does in England. Furthermore, many Americans are second-language learners and thirdly, our marketing and advertising cultures use new forms that are not standard grammar just to catch attention - and many of these new forms become common usage.
Esperanto has less likelihood of this since about 99% of its speakers learn it as a foreign language and do not use it on a daily basis. Their communication is much more form oriented, i.e. speaking "correct Esperanto' than is the use of American English in the US. Here we want RESULTS - no matter how we get 'em. We are much more ends-oriented than means-oritented.

jefusan:Just out of curiosity, where are you from? I grew up partially in Eastern PA and I didn't once hear this construction until my sister went to Penn State....

I know some people who use this construction and they do seem to be from the central PA area around Penn State.

robbkvasnak:We are fairly open to different forms of American dialects in the US - especially since we are a very mobile country. In my life I have lived in New England, California, Iowa, Indiana, Penssylvania, New York and now Florida. Language plays less of a role in displaying one's social class here than it does in England. Furthermore, many Americans are second-language learners and thirdly, our marketing and advertising cultures use new forms that are not standard grammar just to catch attention - and many of these new forms become common usage. ... Here we want RESULTS - no matter how we get 'em. We are much more ends-oriented than means-oritented.

I agree with you to a degree, but language still does mark social class or social grouping in the US, and it is still not really acceptable to include these local dialect bits of grammar in anything outside casual conversation and private, informal communications. You can't expect to put it in a business document and have it not be corrected, and people wouldn't use it in a business presentation unless they're looking for some kind of folksy, everyday vibe. I think you overstate the extent to which such forms ever gain popular acceptance as normative English (and not just a quirk of a certain region's dialect). I don't agree that the US English is more ends-oriented than means-oriented, not any more than any other language.

robbkvasnak:

Vestitor:...

Your hair needs washed

Yes, this form also exists in Caribbean dialects - me thinks it comes from Irish indentured servants who were brought there by the English.
As to the amount to literacy here - English is a living language subject to change. Some of them became very angry at me because I pointed out that there are several variants - the British and the American among others. There is, alas, no ONE single standard English. I know that the Europeans prefer a British variant. But when spoken that way here it is quaint. If I as an American were to use the British variant here people would deem me very affected.

This relativistic argument is getting very common now. I don't accept it at all. The view that there are 'many Englishes'. Yes, there are variations in English to wherever it has spread and become the national language, there are lots of dialects too, but there is still a standard of grammar and syntax considered 'correct'. If this wasn't the case it would be impossible to mark and grade exams in English language study, as is the case for almost every language.

In England, in the village I'm from in the north, there are many unusual constructions like e.g: Is her wentin' = Is she going. Clearly it is a malformation using 'went' outside of its correct usage. I spoke like this when I was a child, and still have traces of it, but I know it is a dialect that grew from mild illiteracy when many people were not formally schooled. I'm not ashamed of it, but I'm aware of it.
There is nothing 'quaint' about English in Britain, nothing quaint at all. I don;t think Europeans favour it either; there are many now mimicking American English pronunciation, mostly from TV.

Language is subject to change, but the trend doesn't necessarily have to lean towards bad grammar or misunderstandings; the argument always seems to run in the direction of deterioration. It doesn't matter how many people say e.g. 'I could care less', they're eternally wrong, and always will be, because the meaning is destroyed. In the age of mass communications we have to be able to communicate outside of the Hicksville village.

During my contact with people from GB [I worked in an English-German company for about 10 years], I noticed a much more intense attention put by the English on form than I have among Americans. Once in our London office someone asked me how I found working with a specific coworker. I said just fine. He said: but she is from Hampshire - how can you stand her accent? To be honest, she sounded the same to me as the rest of them.
I was actually first hired because 'English' is one of my mother languages. But the Brit group soon raised some red flags about my English. Well, I should say Union Jack flags. Fortunately, most of our customers in Germany were American corporations: Campbell's Soup and Mars, for example. My immediate boss, a German, was very happy that I speak American English and he insisted that I edit all reports from our company to the aforementioned firms - even those written in London.

You're right, we should give the German boss the last word. It's always best to take the authoritative view of someone speaking English as a second language.

robbkvasnak:During my contact with people from GB [I worked in an English-German company for about 10 years], I noticed a much more intense attention put by the English on form than I have among Americans. Once in our London office someone asked me how I found working with a specific coworker. I said just fine. He said: but she is from Hampshire - how can you stand her accent? To be honest, she sounded the same to me as the rest of them.

Granted, it's not polite to comment on someone's accent in the US. But it's unfair to say that Americans have no accent prejudice whatsoever. Everyone has most-loved and most-hated accents, and when you know the landscape of a place's accents well, you're in a better position to have a preference to which you enjoy hearing more than others.

I find certain American accents to be very annoying, and certain British accents as well, and I can't deny that I'd find it irritating to work with someone who persistently pronounced "think" as "fink", or some such. It's both positive and negative accent discrimination. Some people love a Welsh accent, some people love a Southern US accent. Loving some accents more inherently implies loving some accents less.

It applies to any language, including Esperanto. I know an Esperanto speaker who always pronounces "pluraj" like "ploraj". Whenever I hear him speak, my first thought is always that his world must be very sad because everything is always crying. A strong accent in Esperanto from one country might grate on my ear moreso than a strong accent from a different country, or I might find someone hard to understand due to their accent.

You're a better person than most if you have no preference whatsoever for an accent and dialect that sounds better to your ear than the others!

Vestitor:

robbkvasnak:In large parts of the US people use the form: you hair needs cut - the room needs painted... etc.
I know "grammarians" will tell me that this is wrong [and it is also not a form that I use] but it is so common that trying to change the speech of so many would be impossible

Are you serious? It's not just 'wrong', but semi-literate. The same sort of structure creates: 'Your hair needs wash..' which sounds like someone speaking English as a second language. I could easily understand: 'Your hair needs (a good) wash', but not the former sentence.

As a native English speaker I resent this on two levels. First, you're wrong about the construction. It is "needs + past participle". "Your hair needs washed." Your example ticks not on the adjective good, but on the use of an article to make "wash" a noun, not a verb. "Your hair needs a wash."

Second, I am certain that I am speaking English correctly and my literacy is just fine. It is informal---I would never encourage one of my students to write that construction. I am in fact literate enough to know it is an elliptical of "Your hair needs to be washed". As a rule, all but a few kinds of elliptical clauses are frowned on in formal English, but that does not make them "wrong" in less formal settings, like spoken English.

This is one of sudanglo's (the OP) favorite games in Esperanto. To see how well we can capture these in-formalities and nuances in Esperanto. This turns out to be hard here because it is a bending of English and illuminates something about both languages.

I've never heard so much pompous claptrap in all my life.

Vestitor:I've never heard so much pompous claptrap in all my life.

OK, but I hope you realise this rhetoric isn't helping your position. Cf. the Hierarchy of Disagreement. (I have a feeling I've posted this link a million times on the Web by now.)