Lol!
how is that any different than “do”?
Why not? How is this any different than someone saying, “lord knows I can’t stand a wigger.”?
Do needs to be modified to convey the meaning of 'be doing". Do is present tense. Be doing is a continuous action-- meaning past, present and into the future.
Wiki’s explanation:
*Aspect marking
The most distinguishing feature of AAVE is the use of forms of be to mark aspect in verb phrases. The use or lack of a form of be can indicate whether the performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In SAE, this can be expressed only using adverbs such as usually. It is disputed whether the use of the verb “to be” to indicate a habitual status or action in AAVE has its roots in various West African languages.*
thanks
Thanks. I’ll note that this doesn’t appear to be the way this form is always used. I constantly hear one little kid say to the next “what you be doing?” to ask “what are you doing?” There is no intended aspect of continuousness discernable from context.
You do? Really? Because the black folk I know don’t do that. “Whatcha doin’?” is what I constantly hear little kids say when they mean “what are you doing-- right now.” “What you be doing” goes something like this.
“You go to church on Sunday?”
“Yeup.”
“What you be doing?”
I don’t want to discount your experiences, but maybe you should be listening a bit closer.
And now we done hijacked pizzabrat’s thread all the way to Cuba.
Ditto, and I’d suggest it’s another example of overhearing somebody who wasn’t talking to you, and the obvious result of misinterpretation.
Thanks Askia! Actually, I think my classmates would definitely have liked some of those, particularly the outfits made out of sports team uniforms. Why didn’t we think of that?..
What we did think of was perhaps equally horrifying, although in a different way. I managed to find an image approximately equivalent to my own eighth-grade prom dress from 1977. Except mine was in butter-yellow with short sleeves. Dear Og, those were some nasty threadz.
What, exactly, is your definition of being an oreo? I’ve been accused of being a “twinkie” - because most of my friends are white, because I hate Korean pop music, because I don’t participate in organizations and gatherings that are exclusively Korean/Asian. I know the politics are different, depending on the ethnic group, but it really annoys me when people talk about others being “whitewashed” just because they don’t subscribe to a certain kind of culture that others deem to be “authentic.”
I live in an old in-town neighborhood with a large, established black population. My neighbors and their kids and grandkids talk to me. I’ve grown up gowing to school and playing sports with black kids. They talked to me too. I worked for three summers at a summer camp for “innner city” youth, which in southern Alabama meant for every 100 kids, 95 were black, 4 where white, one was non-black hispanic. They talked to me, lots. I maintain that I have heard in conversations in which I was a participant “be doing” used to mean “doing,” “are doing” and “going to do”
Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ve spoken with my llittle white kid neighbors and they say “There’s no fit” when they mean “There’s no room.” Why do white people talk that way? Is that a feature of SAE? I’ve been a participant in many conversations when they do this. As a matter of fact, all my white friends’ children say ‘geeses’ when they mean geese and feets when it should be ‘feet’-- let me make this perfectly clear, some of my best friends’ children are white, so I will maintain that this is, in fact, a feature of SAE.
You have stumbled upon some sub category of language . . . baby talk, maybe? You’ve described variant rules for use of “to be” that you imply are somehow obeyed with unflinchingly rigid regularity in the black community. I guess the kids I heard just weren’t speaking proper AAVE
Since it’s a common mistake for outsiders to think that “I be” = “I am”, it’s just much easier to believe that you misinterpreted someone.
Wholebean, after ducking out of this thread, I have decided to jump back in to make just one single statement.
I call bullshit on your whole story. I don’t believe you ever heard it used the way you are insisting at all. Maybe in some movies and t.v. shows that are trying to imitate black slang. But I call bullshit on your *absolute positive memory * of hearing it used the way you claim.
Gee whiz, Nzinga, isn’t that a bit sweeping? Surely it’s possible that whole bean did now and then really hear a juvenile AAVE speaker using “be” incorrectly? Just as in Biggirl’s example, some juvenile SAE speakers sometimes use features of SAE incorrectly.
Busted, dude. I write this from rural Vermont. Thank god someone like you can come along and expose me, what with your monopolisitic access to records of language usage in every black American community. :rolleyes: Your confidence in something you have absolutely no ability to know is astounding. It’s only overshadowed by the fact that you’re oblivious to your ignorance.
Yeah. It is sweeping. It is possible that one has heard that bizarre usage at some point. Just as I am sure one may have heard someone say “I are go to the store now.” Possibly. But that would be bizarre. I simply doubt his (or her, sorry) story altogether. I smell bullshit with it.
Poor bean, getting the brunt of my-- and other’s-- frustrations.
Because it is frustrating to continue to hear the “I be, he be, she be” joke all the time and, no matter how it is explained or what linguists have to say about AAVE, people persist on believing otherwise.
See in this thread. All the AAVE speakers saying that “I be” does not equal “I am” and yet there is wholebean insisting she knows how black people speak better than, well, black people. The stereotype is hard to put down since it has been drummed into our collective heads that “Ebonics” is Standard English spoken by dullards.
So, I apologize for being snarky, wholebean.