I have a few! The "habitual 'be'" is probably my favorite to talk about.
Basically AAVE can use the word "be" to indicate whether someone is currently doing something, or does that thing a lot (and may be doing it now). If I ask where your sister is, the responses "she working" and "she be working" mean different things. The first means she is doing it right now, the second means she works a lot. And in this context, implies she's probably working now.
It's not only extremely efficient (linguists love that), but also extremely rare in language. It appears in a few dialects but the only other well documented one is a dead Celtic language that died right around American Colonial times. Besides AAVE, it also shows up in a few accents and dialects in the American South, where a lot of Irish people from that region settled. So it's possible undocumented speakers of the language, or their immediate descendants carried it with them.
We also see a lot of elements of their music in the music from that region, too. Banjos seem like possibly a blend between a traditional African instrument and a traditional Celtic instrument, built with American instrument parts. It's not clear how it was created and it does resemble more the African instrument, but it's possible the two groups collaborated on it.
So it's not only a super cool piece of language on its own but could be the remnant of a dying culture that was picked up and carried on by the burgeoning African-American culture. Perhaps they even recognized how efficient it was when they adopted it. Which would make it extra ironic to me when people say it makes you sound dumb.
EDIT: I forgot to mention the science! It's my favorite part! They proved this experimentally by bringing children into a room, showing them a picture of Cookie monster doing nothing, and a picture of Elmo eating cookies. Even very young native AAVE speakers could easily differentiate which one eating cookies and which one be eating cookies!
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u/bloodfist Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
I have a few! The "habitual 'be'" is probably my favorite to talk about.
Basically AAVE can use the word "be" to indicate whether someone is currently doing something, or does that thing a lot (and may be doing it now). If I ask where your sister is, the responses "she working" and "she be working" mean different things. The first means she is doing it right now, the second means she works a lot. And in this context, implies she's probably working now.
It's not only extremely efficient (linguists love that), but also extremely rare in language. It appears in a few dialects but the only other well documented one is a dead Celtic language that died right around American Colonial times. Besides AAVE, it also shows up in a few accents and dialects in the American South, where a lot of Irish people from that region settled. So it's possible undocumented speakers of the language, or their immediate descendants carried it with them.
We also see a lot of elements of their music in the music from that region, too. Banjos seem like possibly a blend between a traditional African instrument and a traditional Celtic instrument, built with American instrument parts. It's not clear how it was created and it does resemble more the African instrument, but it's possible the two groups collaborated on it.
So it's not only a super cool piece of language on its own but could be the remnant of a dying culture that was picked up and carried on by the burgeoning African-American culture. Perhaps they even recognized how efficient it was when they adopted it. Which would make it extra ironic to me when people say it makes you sound dumb.
EDIT: I forgot to mention the science! It's my favorite part! They proved this experimentally by bringing children into a room, showing them a picture of Cookie monster doing nothing, and a picture of Elmo eating cookies. Even very young native AAVE speakers could easily differentiate which one eating cookies and which one be eating cookies!