Tell me about this sentence construction

October 22, 2009 9:23 AM

Tell me everything you know about this sentence construction: "Are you finished your lunch?"

In the past few months, I've heard the following three sentences while watching cartoons with my son.

1. "Are you finished your lunch?"
2. "I'm all finished my book."
3. "I'm finished the decorations."

At first I thought the sentence must have been misdubbed or something - like it was written "Have you finished . . ." and there was an error in recording the voice and they just left it. But three times (and on different shows)?

I'm in the US. Is this a regional thing, or common in English speaking countries other than the US? I'm 33, and I had never before heard this construction, nor seen it in print or noticed it in anything I've read on the web.

Have you heard this? Do you use it? Where are you from and what languages do you speak? Any details appreciated.

posted by peep to writing & language (91 comments total)

I'm in the UK, all three would be considered commonplace.
posted by fire&wings at 9:26 AM on October 22

I've heard the first one in common usage (I'm in the UK, specifically, Scotland).

Not so much heard the other two but I get the gist of them.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 9:28 AM on October 22

UK-dweller who listens out for interesting language constructions in everyday speech and.. no, I can't say I've heard that here. My gut impression is that it seems like a rural southern US sort of construction - perhaps even African American Vernacular English. The Wikipedia entry for AAVE includes phrases of similar construction like "He done worked" and "He be working."

I don't know about the US, but in the UK there's been a subtle movement in the media over the past 20 years to allow more colloquial speech and accents to be rendered. Perhaps a similar attitude in the US is leading to such language being considered OK to be published generally.
posted by wackybrit at 9:31 AM on October 22

I've never heard of this before (in the United States). It strikes me as very wrong and bad. Grammatically speaking, it should be "Have you finished your lunch?" or "Are you finished with your lunch?" Or even "Are you finished lunching?" I'm a white Yankee unqualified to comment on wackybrit's comment, but I've never encountered phrases like this in that dialect, personally.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:35 AM on October 22

What shows were you watching?

I'm in the Southern US and haven't heard anything that bad in everyday speech by people old enough to matter. I don't think it fits in with the link wackybrit provided either. Those examples aren't of similar construction if you ask me. Those examples consist of a change in word choice, while your examples involve leaving out a word entirely.
posted by theichibun at 9:40 AM on October 22

I've spent plenty of time in the US South, and those don't sound like Southern regionalisms to me. Seems totally reasonable that it would be a common construction in some dialect somewhere, though.
posted by aka burlap at 9:40 AM on October 22

It strikes me as very wrong and bad.


Hmmm, it may not be grammatically correct, but wrong or bad? Overstating much? I think we all understand the gist of each of the phrases and surely that is what is important.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 9:44 AM on October 22

This strikes me as a stilted, anachronistic usage of these words as intransitive verbs, almost a deliberate affectation, like "the ladies who lunch."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:45 AM on October 22

I am in the northeast US and this doesn't strike me as terribly uncommon in speech. Googling "Are you finished your" (for example) certainly turns up a bunch of uses of this construction.
posted by phoenixy at 9:46 AM on October 22

As a southern, these don't sound at all like Southern phrases to me. My wife, who's from New England, will say things like this though. Things like "Are you done the book?" She's the only person I've ever heard talk like that, so I noticed it.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:46 AM on October 22

Er, as a Southerner, obviously.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:47 AM on October 22

In Canada, I've never been corrected in school for my use of 'being finished' in English class-- however, I am more likely to say I have finished something because of my french immersion education ingrained in me that it is proper grammar. "Je suis fini" (I am finished) is about as good as saying "I am dead", whereas "J'ai fini" is correctly saying "I have finished".
posted by sunshinesky at 9:47 AM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ugh, that grates on me, and no, I've never heard it (US, here, Great Lakes region). It reminds me of the "The floor needs mopped" phrasing we've no doubt discussed here before, which I also dislike. And yes, blah blah elitist-prescriptivismcakes, but you asked.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:47 AM on October 22

Well, on second thought, they're like gerunds, kinda -- "finished your lunch."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:48 AM on October 22

1. "Are you finished your lunch?"
2. "I'm all finished my book."
3. "I'm finished the decorations."

All fine, all a bit colloquial. Two different things are happening here.

(1) "Are you" (present tense) is less formal and more modern than "Have you" (present perfect) which is probably the version you were taught in school. Use of the perfect tenses are in decline in English: modern ears hear them as too stilted and formal.

(2) The blank "finished" is also quite casual and might be throwing you. If I wanted to be a hair more formal as a writer, I'd use "finished with" in any of those three sentences: "Are you (or Have you) finished with your lunch?"

To be even more formal than that, I'd use a real verb. "Are you (Have you) finished eating your lunch?" and "hanging the decorations" and so on.

All of the above are fine and passable, but no two versions are identical in meaning. Language is slippery and subtle.

So choose the style you wish, realizing that the level of formality and choice of voice says something, too. As others have said, Southern US English tends to have a bit more formal flair, while the Northeast and West Coast are more about compact bluntness.... and there are many, many variations within that too.

I'm done with this now.
posted by rokusan at 9:49 AM on October 22

What shows were you watching?

1. Not sure.
2. Caillou. (Canadian or French Canadian show.)
3. Can't recall any noteworthy details, but definitely was NOT Caillou. I'll rack my brain here and see if I can figure it out. All these were from On Demand kids channels through Comcast.
posted by peep at 9:49 AM on October 22

My Canadian co-worker says things like this. I've never heard it from an American.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:49 AM on October 22

Use of the perfect tenses are is in decline in English.

Ha. I am pretty funny when I don't use Preview.
posted by rokusan at 9:50 AM on October 22

I grew up in the northeast. These constructions sound normal to me, and I used to use them regularly. Since I left the northeast I've been corrected or looked at oddly and have attempted to excise them from my speech.

No idea on origin, just a data point noting their usage in the mid-Atlantic.
posted by cacophony at 9:54 AM on October 22

Wow. I had no idea anyone considered those constructions at all acceptable. (Midwestern born and raised)
posted by zsazsa at 9:57 AM on October 22 [7 favorites has favorites]

My gut impression is that it seems like a rural southern US sort of construction - perhaps even African American Vernacular English. The Wikipedia entry for AAVE includes phrases of similar construction like "He done worked" and "He be working."

Another Southerner, familiar with both common Southern dialects and AAVE and I've never heard any of those. They all sound like they're missing "with," to me.

1. "Are you finished with your lunch?"
2. "I'm all finished with my book."
3. "I'm finished with the decorations."
posted by notashroom at 9:57 AM on October 22 [2 favorites has favorites]

"Are you finished eating?"

(Just now realizing that I say this *all* the time)

New England, fwiw.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:59 AM on October 22

Nthing Phoenixy. While these statements might not be technically correct, they don't seem unusual to me. Of course, I'm also in the northeastern US.
posted by K5 at 9:59 AM on October 22

I grew up in the northeast US (upstate New York), and those constructions sound very odd to me. So it doesn't seem to be present everywhere in the region.
posted by wyzewoman at 9:59 AM on October 22

I've heard all of them. One and three are something I might use casually, when I'm not concerned about being strictly grammatically correcnt. Construction two is something I have heard, but usually only coming from a child.
posted by spaltavian at 10:00 AM on October 22

Er. Northeastern US. ('northeast US' was an editing error, not a regional thing!)
posted by wyzewoman at 10:00 AM on October 22

I have heard them here in New York City, from educated people who grew up in the northeast, but I couldn't narrow it down geographically further than that. I never heard them growing up in Texas and Arkansas.
posted by Mavri at 10:00 AM on October 22

I've lived in the Midwest, the South, and on the East Coast. I've never heard any of those and they all sound wrong to me.
posted by tdismukes at 10:05 AM on October 22

I'm from the northeast (of the US) and I have never heard these constructions. To my ear, they're each missing the "with". Stick a with in there (are you finished with your lunch) and all is good.

Where are the linguists? "I finished my book" is fine, but "I am all finished my book" sounds like it's coming from someone who learned English as a second language- in other words, it's such a nonsensical alteration that it doesn't seem like it would come about naturally. I'm not a linguist, though.
posted by Baethan at 10:06 AM on October 22

I'm from Montreal, and the first one sounds normal, the second sounds odd -- I'm all finished my X is fine, but weird when X=book. (I'm all finished my homework/chores/salad/bath/chapter all seem ok.) I have definitely heard both of these constructions.

The last sounds oddest to me. Not ungrammatical, just weird. But I think that might be because you need more context: it's probably just fine if I already know what you're doing with the decorations (making them, putting them up, taking them away).
posted by jeather at 10:12 AM on October 22

Raised in Boston - all three sound weird to me, and I don't recall ever hearing the construction before.
posted by dfan at 10:12 AM on October 22

This seems like perfectly typical colloquial spoken English to me. (Geographic demographic purposes: Mid-Atlantic area, familiar with both upper-middle-class and working-class dialects.)
posted by desuetude at 10:12 AM on October 22

Eeek. I agree that they all sound "wrong" to me, and a "with" should be added.

Grew up in southern Indiana, colleged in Central NY State, and am now in Austin. Have yet to hear any of these phrases spoken. However, with my experiences w MeFi and confirmation bias, I will now start to hear this construction all the time :P
posted by theRussian at 10:12 AM on October 22

I've heard people drop prepositions like that. More along the lines of:

"He's gone up the church." (dropping the word "to" or maybe replacing "to" with "the")

-
posted by General Tonic at 10:14 AM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is grammatically wrong but most English speakers would understand.

It very much reminds me of my Canadian friend from Toronto, but mostly when he would put on a comedy accent, which suggests he knew it was a colloquialism.
posted by KMH at 10:16 AM on October 22

I have never heard anyone speak like this (grew up on US west coast, currently live in New England.) To my ears it sounds ungrammatical to the point of illiteracy. (Whatever the spoken form of illiteracy is, anyway.)
posted by ook at 10:18 AM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

US ex-pat in Southwestern Ontario -- these are familiar constructs here I have never heard anywhere else. I think the French rubs off on folks and has produced this as well as the "shut the light" idiom also fairly common here.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:20 AM on October 22

The use of to be instead of to have, is definitely not the Queen's English. I've always assumed it was a Pan-North American convention, since it's so standard here in Canada. In anything formal, though, I would absolutely go with have.

You may have just stumbled upon the new eh!

FWIW, I remember a lot of people in (Canadian) French class getting flak for instinctively using "Je suis fini" (I am finished) rather than the proper "J'ai fini" (I have finished). It should be noted that, indeed, if you are watching Caillou, that that's a Quebecois show.

Now, that said, in everyday speech, a real person would probably leave out the Are you, and possibly the your lunch as well, leaving the beautifully efficient, Finished? (Although, really, All done? would be the more usual waitressy/baby-feeding expression, perhaps with a here or there to indicate the you.)

Also: Remember that line in There Will Be Blood? "I'm fiiiniiished!" Is that not the super cheesy pun I thought it was?
posted by Sys Rq at 10:23 AM on October 22

I'm a non-native English speaker living in New England. I hear sentences like that every once in a while, I associate them with England and so I've filed them away in my head as British speech that lives on in New England, but I have no idea whether that's actually the case or not.
posted by Kattullus at 10:30 AM on October 22

One more Southerner adding in...while there's plenty opportunity for bad grammar down here, it doesn't come in the form of the provided examples.
posted by Atreides at 10:39 AM on October 22

I think I've heard this from my three year old. Because, you know, he's just learning the language.

I agree with The Winsome Parker Lewis, above, that it is wrong and bad. If I ever heard someone speak this way I'd immediately wash their mouths out with soap.
posted by Sassyfras at 10:40 AM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

None of those sound remotely odd to me, in fact and I had to read them about five times to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I still don't get how anyone could think "I am finished the book" is not perfectly normal standard English.

I've from Western Canada, English immigrant parents, lived in Quebec and Ontario as well as England itself.
posted by Rumple at 10:40 AM on October 22

I'm in Toronto and I those sound so normal to me that I didn't even understand the question. I would say if you're using "finished" as a past tense: "I finished (my lunch)" or past participle "I have finished." to describe something you did, well that's nice for you. But you can also use finished as an adjective that describes your current state: "I'm finished" is no different than "I'm hungry" or "I'm burned" or "I'm done."

I don't think expressing this thought as your current state using an adjective is in any sense "dumbing down" the language. It may not be common usage in some places, but I can't see any reason why it's any more wrong, grammatically, than the last three examples I gave.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:45 AM on October 22

on preview, I notice that the following doesn't even answer your question, per se, but...um...I already typed it out, so here you go!


Alright, I'm a little rusty on my linguistics, but I'm going to give this a shot:

1) * "I am finished my lunch"
2) "I have finished my lunch"
3) "I am finished with my lunch"

The first sentence (which I have labeled as non-standard, based on user-comments and my own bias) differs from the other two in the way that the word 'finish' functions.

In the first sentence, 'finished' functions as an adjective, while in the other two versions, it functions as a verb.

In 'standard' English, while it is completely acceptable to link a verb phrase (VP) to a noun phrase (NP) (ex. I dropped the spoon),

Linking an adjective phrase (AdjP) to an NP without a preposition to intervene is problematic (ex. *"I am dying thirst" vs. "I am dying of thirst." or "*"I am green envy" vs. "I am green with envy")

Ah, but what about the sentence, "I am finishing my lunch", which seems to share similar construction to "I am finished my lunch". They may look similar, but "am finishing" is a gerund and functions as a verb in the sentence.

And now that I think of it, (if we're still going off the premise that "I am finished lunch" is 'non-standard') this gerund form ("I am finishing") could explain the origins of "I am finished". They are so similar that, in some dialects, they could become interchangeable, due to the influence of other languages (perhaps languages that do link AdjPs and NPs together) or any other number of internal factors.

There's my two cents.
I'm not an expert, I only got my B.A. in linguistics (grad school freaked me out), but hopefully this helps.

*summons languagehat*
posted by chara at 10:45 AM on October 22 [3 favorites has favorites]

I should add: 1. Totally commonplace, 2. Weird - It sounds like someone has eaten their book, 3. I probably wouldn't notice it in passing, but seeing it in print, it's just bizarre without a with in there.

Again, Canada.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:46 AM on October 22

Compare to:

I am doing ----> I'm done
I am finishing -----> I'm finished

Subtly different meaning to

I am doing -----> I've done
I am finishing -----> I've finished

Also, FWIW check yahoo answers
posted by Rumple at 10:49 AM on October 22

In english, isn't "to have" one of those words that has two meanings?

"to have" meaning to posses

and

"to have" as an adverb to "to be" that indicates an imperfect tense?

??

But, to the main question, the verb is missing. Or being mis-used, turning "finished" into the verb and the actual verb into a modifier. IE, what you are doing is finishing [something]. "I am reading this book" versus "I am finishing reading this book" versus "I am finishing this book."

After typing all that out, what it really sounds like is a mis-use of tense. "Are you finished?" might not be gramatically perfect, but if everyone knows what you were working on, it makes sense. And the tense is correct- we want to know, in the present, the state of your work. Specifying the task would become "Are you finished reading the book?" Meaning, right now, is this task complete.

On the other hand, if we want to know if you completed your work at some time in the past, we need to use the correct form of to be. "Have you finished?" is "did you complete this task at some point in the recent past?" And if we want to specify what task it was, we would add it on "Have you finished reading the book?"

It seems to be the same tense/verb confusion that I've noticed in the trades: "this picture needs hung" or "this component needs replaced". It is just a mis-application of the various perfect and imperfect tenses.

(It might even be some kind of passivation- "please hang the picture" is active, "the picture needs to be hung" is passive, and "the picture needs hung" is somehow super-passive...?)
posted by gjc at 10:50 AM on October 22

Just to clarify 'standard' is a completely subjective term, and I'm just using it here for clarity's sake, based upon the question the OP asked.

For the record, I grew up in the midwestern US (kansas/missouri), and I have not heard this type of phrasing before, though I do hear my fair share of "The [noun] needs [conjugated verb]" ("The floor needs mopped vs. The floor needs mopping")

Which makes me wonder:

To people for whom "I am finished lunch" is grammatically correct, does "The floor needs mopped" sound correct to you as well?

If so, that gives a little credence to my hypothesis that gerunds and 'verbs' functioning as AdjPs are interchangeable.
posted by chara at 10:54 AM on October 22

Also, it could be slightly more correct in certain situations. Eating, for example, is one of those things where "to lunch" and "to sup[per]" are verbs. So "finish your lunch" or "finish your supper" is more correct than "finish your book", because one can engage in the act of lunching and supping, whereas someone engaged in the act of booking probably isn't reading.
posted by gjc at 10:55 AM on October 22

1. "Are you finished your lunch?"

I've never heard this statement and it sounds both grating to the ear and horribly malformed. For vastly improved clarity, there ought to be a "with" in there, or perhaps swap the "are" for a "have."

2. "I'm all finished my book."
3. "I'm finished the decorations."

These also sound mangled, malformed, or confusing. I have never heard this unconventional dropping of the word "with," and if I heard it would attribute it to garbled speech. Frankly I'm quite surprised anyone finds this to be anything other than malformed.
posted by majick at 10:59 AM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

just adding myself to the data points, I'm in the upper midwest and have never heard any of these, they all sound unfinished
posted by Think_Long at 11:05 AM on October 22

"I am finished." is always intransitive in my book.
"I am finished with ____" is used for the transitive present passive tense.

"I have finished" can be transitive to a direct object, "I have finished XYZ". No preposition required.
posted by mokuba at 11:08 AM on October 22

Best bet: common in Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic provinces and the neighbouring New England states, with some drift south and west. It probably was once a borrowing from French/too literal translation, but has hit standard and entirely acceptable in some dialects of English.

"The floor needs mopped" sounds colloquial, but not from here, and I wouldn't say it. I'd say it's ungrammatical for my dialect.

I think that it's more a changing of the kinds of arguments that 'finished' needs, from 'with NP' to 'NP', but I'm not really looking too deeply at the grammar.

Googling "I'm all finished my" gives a bunch of things one can be finished: revisions (Toronto), studies, short story collection (Newfoundland), portrait, tests, edits, animation (Canada, maybe BC). I saw one Aberdeen, and one maybe Alberta, and some I couldn't accurately locate.
posted by jeather at 11:17 AM on October 22

As yet another not necessarily useful data point, I grew up in Tennessee and have lived in Boston and San Francisco, and I've never heard anything like that in my life. Not even in Boston, a place where I heard novel (to me) language constructions seemingly every day. They all sound unfinished and childlike to me, like the kind of thing a teacher would have scolded me for saying.
posted by mostlymartha at 11:24 AM on October 22

Another data point for Ontario and Canada. Those statements sound completely normal to me. Not to say they are grammatically correct but they are certainly used frequently.

I hear "the floor needs mopped" or a variant, frequently, as well.
posted by pixlboi at 11:27 AM on October 22

All three sound incredibly normal to me and I live in Newfoundland and speak English with a smattering of French.
posted by futureisunwritten at 11:32 AM on October 22

I've lived in New England and San Francisco and have Canadian (Toronto, Montreal) family, and those all sound fine to me... I've definitely heard that construction on many occasions, though I can't remember where/who said them.
posted by brainmouse at 11:36 AM on October 22

Grew up in the Great Lakes area, spent years in Boston, and I have never heard those constructions. The phrases sound mangled enough to me that if it weren't for the people attesting to their usage in Canada, I would have assumed that they were errors from someone for whom English was a second language. "I am finished with [X]" or "Are you finished with [X]" or "I have finished [X]" are all fine. Either adding "with" or swapping "am/are finished" for "finished"/"have finished" make the sentences sound fine to me.

I'm somewhat surprised at those explaining these constructions by saying "I am finished" is analogous to "I am hungry." Sure, but you (or at least I) would never say "I am hungry ice cream" or "Are you excited the holidays?" You might, however, say something more like "I am hungry for ice cream" or "Are you excited for the holidays?" This seems to go for every other "I am [verb]ed" construction that I can come up with.
posted by ubersturm at 12:04 PM on October 22

UK here. Never heard anyone say something like that before, and it sounds really wrong to my ear. It doesn't even sound right as slang.
posted by lucidium at 12:12 PM on October 22

Never heard these, lived in the NW and NE U.S.

Sounds to me like in all three the speaker just (accidentally?) dropped the "with".

1. "Are you finished [with] your lunch?"
2. "I'm all finished [with] my book."
3. "I'm finished [with] the decorations."

Maybe they just spoke really fast. Maybe the "with" is implied and unstated in some regions or contexts. I know sometimes when I say the word "with" in sentences like these it's very under my breath and sounds like a quiet "wi" sound. Maybe written would be like "I'm finished w'the decorations" with a very soft "w" sound.

Could it be that what you're hearing is just a very, very subdued "w" sound before the next word?
posted by lorrer at 12:17 PM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

"I'm somewhat surprised at those explaining these constructions by saying "I am finished" is analogous to "I am hungry." Sure, but you (or at least I) would never say "I am hungry ice cream" or "Are you excited the holidays?" You might, however, say something more like "I am hungry for ice cream" or "Are you excited for the holidays?" This seems to go for every other "I am [verb]ed" construction that I can come up with."

I'm burned. Also, "I'm done" is similar in meaning and in grammar. It doesn't end in -ed but it is also used as a part-participle.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:18 PM on October 22

West Coast US here (WA, OR, CA, NV), and I've never heard this construction before. It sounds not just wrong but implausible, like something a hack SF writer would make up.
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:26 PM on October 22

I'm English, and have lived in various parts of the UK, and have never heard any of those used.
posted by badmoonrising at 12:30 PM on October 22

From Nova Scotia, Anglophone (with French classes through high school), from a city with Anglophone parents.

I also had to read your question three times to figure out what you were asking because it sounds so completely normal. I have no idea if I've heard it other places I've lived (NL, SK, SF, AL) because I wouldn't have noted it as unusual at all.

The "all" in the second sentence makes it sound like a little kid is saying it, but I would (and do) say "I'm finished my book/supper/test". On the other hand, "The floor needs mopped" sounds wrong and not like something I'd hear.
posted by hydrobatidae at 12:38 PM on October 22

Also grew up in the Northeast US and it doesn't sound strange to me, but I do recognize it as being colloquial and conversational. I don't hear it often. Then I don't listen for it either. Can't say how common it is, but I know I heard it growing up, especially among older relatives.
posted by zizzle at 12:53 PM on October 22

Could it be that what you're hearing is just a very, very subdued "w" sound before the next word?

Sounds to me like in all three the speaker just (accidentally?) dropped the "with".

No - in my head it would be without a "w'" or "with". Maybe it's dropped but even if I was writing something formal, I would not necessarily write the sentence with a "with".

(Also my city didn't have Anglophone parents, I did. My city is mainly Anglophone though).
posted by hydrobatidae at 12:54 PM on October 22

Western Canadian (Edmonton/Calgary) and all of those sound pretty normal and I don't doubt I've heard them on numerous occassions. I would have no problem saying that.

My parents also talk like that, and they're born and raised in Yorkshire, England.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:56 PM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

I would say that there is an implied verb though.

1. "Are you finished [eating] your lunch?"
2. "I'm all finished [reading] my book."
3. "I'm finished [putting-up] the decorations."
posted by blue_beetle at 12:57 PM on October 22

To those that say "Are you finished your lunch?" should be corrected to "Are you finished WITH your lunch?", I would say that the "lunch" in the phrase refers to the period of time used to eat your food, not to the food itself. You cannot be "finished" with a period of time.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:02 PM on October 22

(finally) "The floor needs mopped" sounds wrong because "mopped" is past-tense while "The floor needs" is present/future tense (subjunctive?). "The floor needs mopping"

I'm finished the floor. I'm finished mopping. The floor is mopped.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:10 PM on October 22

I disagree with an implied verb.

1. Are you finished [eating] your lunch?
Why can't it be: Are you finished [making, putting together, etc] your lunch?

2. I'm all finished [reading] my book.
Why can't it be: I'm all finished [writing, editing, etc] my book?

3. I'm finished [putting up] the decorations.
Why can't it be: I'm finished [taking down, making, planning] the decorations?

I think the problem (besides it being so totally wrong and bad) I have with these statements is that the action is unclear. Are you finished your lunch? Huh? Finished eating it? Finished making it?
posted by Sassyfras at 1:24 PM on October 22

OK, I was able to determine that #3 came from Max & Ruby, which is another Canadian show! So I'm marking a few best answers here - including some just because I found them interesting. I'm still watching the thread and would love to hear from any linguists!
posted by peep at 1:42 PM on October 22

"The floor needs mopped" sounds wrong because "mopped" is past-tense while "The floor needs" is present/future tense (subjunctive?). "The floor needs mopping"

I'm finished the floor. I'm finished mopping. The floor is mopped.

I've heard and said "the floor needs mopped," but it's not past tense, it's dropping part of the verb.

The floor needs [to be] mopped.
The lettuce needs [to be] washed.
The baby needs [to be] fed.
The buggy needs [to be] returned.

This is a familiar construction to me, but having spent most of my life in the SE US (with a chunk in the PNW), I've never heard "with" dropped from a sentence like the ones above by anyone who was over the age of 6 and had English as their first language. It just sounds wrong, although I'm sure that's true of a lot of regionalisms for those on the outside.
posted by notashroom at 1:56 PM on October 22

There are things that just plain wrong. And this one of them.

Nonsense. I'm from Scotland, and I say things like "Are you finished your lunch?" every day.

It sounds totally natural to my ears.

The second sentence ("I'm all finished my book") sounds a bit odd though.
posted by matthewr at 1:58 PM on October 22

Grew up in Montreal; also lived in Toronto, Chicago, southern Indiana, and now northern California.

I probably wouldn't use that construction myself, but it doesn't sound weird or unfamiliar.
posted by tangerine at 2:25 PM on October 22

Another one chiming in to say these all sound very strange to me. What's odder is I grew up about 20 minutes outside of Ontario but stateside (Buffalo, NY) and there was a lot of overlap between US and Canadian television stations/shows so I'm familiar with a lot of other "Canadianisms" (if that is indeed what it is), but this one is new to me.
posted by radiomayonnaise at 2:33 PM on October 22

Street language only...Might be acceptable in Great Britain, but it is elliptical ("with" left out) and
not acceptable at a formal or informal level; at the level below, a class marker.
posted by Postroad at 3:25 PM on October 22

Thank goodness other Canadian's chimed in because I use those expressions and was really confused why you were calling them out. I'm just outside Toronto, and have watched far too much Caillou. Okay, I'm finished making my comment.
posted by saucysault at 3:37 PM on October 22

Damned apostrophe snuck in there...
posted by saucysault at 3:46 PM on October 22

Another Canadian who didn't understand the question because all the statements are commonplace to me. I grew up in BC and have lived in Montreal and Toronto for the past ten years. My family out west uses phrases like these, too.
posted by Felicity Rilke at 7:24 PM on October 22

Are you sure they're not just kind of dropping their voice down/out on the "with" and slurring the words together a bit in each of those phrases? That is,

1. "Are you finished'i'your lunch?"
2. "I'm all finished'wi'my book."
3. "I'm finished'i'the decorations."

So in the last example, for instance, the word "finished'i'the would kind of sound like "finish-tih-the," which perhaps you're hearing as "finish't the." Does that make sense?

Those all strike me as ways people here in the Midwest would/might say those phrases.
posted by limeonaire at 9:18 PM on October 22

The Northeast US and Canadian "acceptance" of this is fascinating. Maybe it did trickle down from French Quebec. I hear it often (NYC) but then again there are more Canadians here than anything else, and I have pretty finely-tuned Canadar and a nose for maple syrup.

But it's not that simple. Do a search on MetaFilter for "finished" and you'll see this construction used by people from everywhere: California to Calgary to Kentucky. So it ain't that simple.

Since these word issues consume my brain time, I asked a coworker (not a linguist, not a writer, a pedestrian and unbiased answer) about this today and got this answer:

"I've finished my breakfast." means the breakfast is gone, the plate is empty. Finished.
"I'm finished my breakfast." means I'm finished, full, done... even if there's food left.

So that's another interesting distinction I did not consider.
posted by rokusan at 11:16 PM on October 22

rokusan - it's interesting what you say about the perfect tense in English, because for me that's one of the defining differences between US and UK usage - the perfect is alive and well here. In normal UK usage we don't say "just" with a simple past, though we get a lot of American advertising with phrases like "XXX just got better/easier/faster!" (contrasting with the standard UK "has just got better etc" which isn't all that elegant) so it's becoming more normal to see it in writing.

Back to the original post - I'm British, have moved around quite a bit and am exposed to lots of different regional variants, and I have never heard anyone use those constructions. The meaning is quite clear in each case, though.
posted by altolinguistic at 2:10 AM on October 23

For those saying that it may have come from the French, please refer to my last post and that of Sys Rq. I can confidently assert that it does not, as my apparent 'proper' usage is in fact solely due to my French education.

It is quite interesting, mind you, that 'being finished' seems to be relatively unique to Canadian vernacular. In Canada, we like to believe our English is more formal than that of our neighbours to the south. Apparently 'being finished' is decidedly informal!
posted by sunshinesky at 3:58 AM on October 23

I grew up in New England, and am of French Canadian descent, and while the example the OP uses doesn't ring any bells, I did have some older relatives who said things like, "Throw me down the stairs my bag" and "Drive slow your car." I'm surprised no one's mentioned it as it's something that's joked about regionally. Rokusan, I wonder if that's why people think it's coming from a French influence...seems to be kind of a verb-object confusion (not a grammar geek, sorry if that's wrong!).
posted by weesha at 6:42 AM on October 23

I am a linguist, and I'm always dismayed when I read this type of question and see responses along the lines of "[construction in question] is just bad and wrong" or (less frequently) slurs against people who use the construction in question and comments about their socio-economic status. Not only do these comments fail to respond to the OP (who in this case asked: "Have you heard this? Do you use it? Where are you from and what languages do you speak?") but the idea that there is exactly one dialect of English that is correct or good or proper is a completely insupportable claim. If this were true, then there would be entire countries of full of people who all speak "wrong" or "bad" English. If this were true, out of Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare, James Joyce, and William Faulkner, at most one wrote "correct" and "good" English.

I realize that I also am not answering the question, but perhaps from now on people could contribute their data points without passing judgment. It would be fantastic if we could have lively discussions about the fascinating diversity of human language without devolving into the boring prescriptivism vs. descriptivism debate.
posted by tractorfeed at 8:09 AM on October 23

I try to avoid saying things like "This is wrong" in discussions like this, but I think there is useful information in the statement "If this showed up as an example in a linguistics textbook it would have an asterisk in front of it." It only needs to be said once though (and maybe already implicitly was by the OP).
posted by dfan at 8:24 AM on October 23

limeonaire: There is no with. At all.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:16 AM on October 23

I'm from Iowa, and I wouldn't say any of these things, but my husband is from Pittsburgh, PA, and he (and his family) would say *all* of these things. From this exhaustive sampling, I think it's a regional variation.
posted by epj at 11:12 AM on October 23

"If this showed up as an example in a linguistics textbook it would have an asterisk in front of it."

The data in this thread indicates that the construction being considered here would not have an asterisk. What linguists find very interesting are the cases which some people would accept and which others think are "bad". No speaker of English thinks that "Dog man bite" is an acceptable sentence in his dialect, but it seems that there is quite a difference of opinion about "Are you finished your lunch" (and to such an extent that some speakers even failed to realize that there was anything "odd" about the construction).

I myself have "resumptive pronouns" in my dialect (e.g. "Do you remember that one restaurant that when we were in Rome on our around-the-world trip with our colleagues we went to it on a Saturday night?" (resumptive pronoun is in italics)) but my partner does not, and cringes almost every time I use one. Does this mean we don't speak the same language? Does this mean that one of us is "wrong"?

Linguists tend to use the asterisk to denote syntactially unacceptable sentences (those which no speaker would accept), a question mark or two to pick out sentences that some speakers accept but others do not (such as the resumptive pronoun cases or the sentences under discussion in this thread), and a hash mark (#) to pick out those sentences that are syntactially correct but semantically odd, such as "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" or "It's raining outside but I don't believe that it is raining." The valuable data is in the liminal cases which some speakers accept and which others do not.
posted by tractorfeed at 3:40 PM on October 23

Some Canadian outliers here.

My sister and I were born in Montreal and moved to Toronto in our early teens. Our mother was anglophone and our father was francophone, but we went to English schools, spoke English in the house, were taught French in school, and spoke Franglais with the neighbourhood kids.

I kind of accept construction #1 but I can't make #2 or #3 work for me at all. And my sister says that "these all seem a bit odd, too basic and the wrong usage of the word finished. Of the 3, I think #1 is 'acceptable' .. as for the others they just seem like nails on a chalkboard to me. I guess others could say all 3, but it sounds like a child speaking."
posted by maudlin at 7:51 AM on October 24