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?
It’s colloquial and you’ll hear it when people talk about making food. Like if you’re making a sandwich. You put mayo on the bread, then you put the cheese, then you add meat and lettuce or whatever.
It’s kind of like “on” is implied and you don’t bother to say it. I just mentioned it, so I don’t need to say it again. That’s how it feels to me anyway.
I could see myself saying “First you put mayo, then you put cheese.” That would be like if someone was standing next to me, watching me make the sandwich. They can see exactly where I’m putting things. But normally you do want to specify where you’re putting something.