I'll preface this by saying that English is not my mother language and I'm sorry if this isn't the right community, but I didn't find a more appropriate one.
Last year I started to notice more and more people on YouTube for example using the verb "to put" without a preposition -- like "Now I put the cheese" -- which sounds very weird and kind of feels wrong to me. Is this really used in spoken English and is it grammatically correct?
No for most people because "put" would require two complements - the object and the place. (It's a lot like a ditransitive verb, even not being one.) And in this case the place is missing, you'd expect it to be at most replaced with an adverb (e.g. "now I put the cheese there").
The exception I can think of as a native speaker is when the place is strongly implied. Like, "Now I put this..." and trail off, but it's obvious where I'm putting it because you're watching me put it somewhere that I've probably indicated multiple times already.
Caveat lector: I'm not a native speaker, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
This exception seems to be a case of right-edge deletion - you're generating the sentence as if you were to utter the adverbial/prepositional complement, but then you chop the sentence just before the element. This can be shown by the following:
- I put some flowers on the table. // OK, complete sentence. Typically including a falling tone near the end.
- I put some flowers... // "on the table" is on the right edge, so it can be deleted.
- I put some flowers on the table for decoration. // OK
- [?] I put some flowers for decoration. // Weird, probably agrammatical.
I can’t speak to whether it’s grammatically correct or not but I noticed people speak like this in Los Angeles. I moved here from the Midwest 10 years ago and this is one of the first things I noticed.
I also know/hear/speak Spanish and I really think this is where it comes from.
The phrase that immediately comes to mind is "poner la mesa." It translates from Spanish as "to set the table" but literally means "to put the table." Similarly, one might take photos with a camera, but the literal meaning of the Spanish phrase "sacar photos" is "to remove photos."
Linguistically and colloquially (the latter lending more to your example of adding cheese to something), we often use weird verbs in specific contexts.
What you've described might not fall into the category of proper grammar, but it also doesn't come across as strange or unexpected.
There are also unspoken rules about the ordering of adjectives to
blindly followfollow blindly.
Edit to add: Proper, verbose grammar is also not usually necessary or even useful in the context of directions/commands, particularly in lists of such. Sure, "add cheese" would probably make a technical writer happier, but the point still gets across.
The context is important as well:
"What toppings do you put on your burgers?"
"I put cheese."
In golf it can be used without preposition but also without object, and with completely unrelated meaning.
It is often heard from non-native speakers and will probably be understood, but in the absence of other context it will be perceived as slightly odd. Perhaps it's on the way to being widely recognized as fully "correct" but I don't think it's there yet.
I have heard this before, mostly from people with English as a second language. It sounds a little odd to my ear and probably isn't technically correct, but like most things in English, if it makes sense in context you can let it slide.
