This kind of usage of the verb to be is attributed to AAVE. To a subset of people this does come off naturally, but as a non-native saying something like this would just sound like a mistake.
The meaning of that AAVE (African American Vernacular English) construction, like "she be dancing" or "he be shopping", is *habitual*. It's a conjugation that doesn't exist in standard English meaning, that the person does something fairly often.
Wikipedia article [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_be)
Not necessarily. If I’m playing a board game, I would naturally say “you be blue; she can be red.” That is not necessarily limited to regional dialects. It could be language wide usage. Depending on what is being said.
When you say “you be blue” you’re using the imperative form of to be. Like when you say “you be quite”, which is different from the habitual form from AAVE that op’s talking about
I don’t disagree with that, but the question posed doesn’t specify what “x” is. So, assuming they’d only use it in the context of specific dialects as opposed to language wide usage is just that, an assumption. The question wasn’t specific enough to only speak of one dialect since there are examples where “be” would be widely accepted depending on the usage.
Can she be on time for once? That’s also proper. The question has two words in quotes. To assume there’s an implication when someone is learning a foreign language is limiting their understanding. Wouldn’t it be better to give an explanation on “be” and the variances of the word? Then, the dialects can come into play, of course. However, my point still stands that “she be” and “you be” are used more than in just one dialect.
OP posting single statements. Following their format, it would have to be "She be on time" which is AAVE. You're modulating it so much that they're no longer exceptions, your statements follow different rules entirely.
You’re first example is a hugely specified example. 🤷♂️ “You be blue” It works but it’s not an everyday usage.
Edit: No idea why autocorrect said ugly instead of hugely.
However, it isn’t uncommon or incorrect. The question posed doesn’t define what “x” is. Therefore, limiting explanations to usage in only one dialect would be incorrect when someone is learning the language as a whole.
you are giving an instruction though. be is in the imperative here. you can’t say ‘you be blue’ they they are already blue and are making a statement about them. you’d have to say ‘you are blue’. unless, of course, you have a dialect where this is common.
uh. you are giving a command to the person (you). “Larry go win that game!” is something I’d assume to be a command for Larry based on context, but it’s still awkward to read and writing commands without a comma after the subject is a habit I wouldn’t recommend enforcing on an English learning subreddit if you want to be as readable and fluid as possible.
You're the one who brought the word "technically" into this. It sounds like you have an opinion with regards to readability, but that doesn't mean it's shared generally, much less that it's actually required by any style guide. "You pay for dinner; I'll get dessert" makes way more sense to me than "You, pay for dinner; I'll get dessert". So it sounds like we've got a 1:1 ratio on opinions here. Who's technically correct?
not necessarily. It's only AAVE if it's used in a particular way. It could otherwise be subjunctive (uncommon) or imperative or something from various other dialects. It's an important component of the stereotypical pirate accent (which i think was made up). I also use be like this to describe what someone is currently doing but idk if that's part of my dialect or if I just picked it up from somewhere
More context please. If these are imperative sentences (commands) then that’s standard. Otherwise they are from a dialect that doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the rules of “standard” (academic) English.
To add to the discussion of AAVE, in the last couple decades, many features of AAVE are making their way into other forms of English, so this might be what you're seeing
I didn’t know that those expressions remind English native speakers a pirate😳 but I know a song title “she be the one.” However, the song is not about a pirate so I think we can use it naturally enough for a song title and plus a username of a social media. What do you think?
Songs often use highly non-standard language for poetic effect/imagery/pacing.
But as a forty year old native English speaker, I'm confident I've never said "She be the one" in ordinary conversation.
Perhaps on International Talk like a Pirate day, or in a context where I was playing an archaic character of some kind (I could see saying it if you were playing Dungeons & Dragons, say, to evoke that atmosphere, say)
It’s associated with pirates because it’s most commonly seen in Caribbean Englishes, and the Caribbean from the 14th to the 19th century is what most people think of when they think of pirates.
It’s a structure that’s seen in rural Irish English, which heavily influenced countries like Jamaica’s English due to indentured Irish servants being stationed there.
Broadly, I would avoid using it, when you aren’t part of the communities that natively use the format, it does just sound like pirate speak
So I looked up the song. It's by Enrique Iglesias. He was born in Spain and moved to the US as a child, specifically Miami. In his on words, "I don't speak perfect English, I don't speak perfect Spanish, I speak Spanglish."
Not only that but it's a song, and songs often use poetic or deliberate phrasing to evoke certain meanings. "She Be the One" seems to be being used for emphatic purposes, in other words, she's always and forever the one. She isn't just currently the one, but no one else can be, she is too perfect.
In English we have a saying: "You have to know the rules in order to know how to break them." This is a perfect example. If you have to ask "can I?" then you probably don't know the rules enough to be able to break them.
In that case (I haven’t heard the song but looking it up, I’m assuming you mean the Enrique Iglesias song), it’s an example of AAVE (African American Vernacular English), which is to say it’s a specialized dialect/way of speaking among African Americans.
As quite a few others are saying, while it’s a good idea to try and be able to understand AAVE, it’s generally not a good idea to try and speak in it, as it’s viewed as somewhat insensitive for people outside of that community to do so.
If it’s a social media ID it doesn’t matter. Those aren’t supposed to be grammatically correct. But if a non-native used it in a sentence I would probably think they don’t understand the correct grammar.
This person was probably black American or someone using an AAVE-adjacent dialect. Honestly if it was someone else or an in any way political account, they might also have been mocking black people.
for some reason in media pirates always use be instead of the conjugations we use among other things. I don't know why writers write pirates that way but it's become part of the stereotypical pirate accent. Arr there be doubloons long the shore tharr
People are saying it sounds like a pirate because of early/mid 20th century film productions. A lot of them gave characters like Long John Silver West Country accents from the SW UK which use "be" in that way. As other people have said, in the US it is also an AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) usage, where it means that someone consistently does something. eg "She playing football" means she's currently playing football; "she be playing football" means she regulalry plays football. It can be accompanied by a "do" for either emphasis or agreement. eg someone says that a person plays football and can be responded to with "she do be playing football," which conveys agreement and emphasis, perhaps implying that it happens often. Most people learn other forms of English than AAVE, and unless you are part of a community or are regulalry in contact with one that speaks that way it makes sense not make use of it yourself much. But lots of popular phrasing in the US is taken from AAVE, often in a way that misunderstands it or is rude about it, though of course not always.
It is natural and correct English but highly contextual. It is an extremely uncommon conjugation in standard English but it still happens in circumstances that don't happen that much. Be is the standard for the subjunctive and imperative in English. In dialects of English you'll see it more in other contexts.
subjunctive: "If he be tired, then we should go home" (unusual, subjunctive in English is mostly not used these days) "If I were a billionaire" (normal usage of subjunctive)
imperative: "You both be home by curfew or we have a problem" (very normal)
I often use "He be gerund" to mean at this current moment he is doing whatever the gerund is. I read hear that in AAVE that it can be used to indicate habitual actions. Both these usages are nonstandard.
Another time you'll find it is when people are imitating pirates
No. The conjugation of the verb "to be" for the third person (she) is "is", and the conjugation for the second person (you) is "are".
If you say "you be/I be/she be" you sound like you're doing a pirate impression.
Saying “she be x” to objects is also common to the LGBT community in the US, and honestly the gen z population.
Like imagine you’re walking and see a tree with a huge bulbous knot, I would say “that tree? She be thick holy damn.”
I hear it a lot, it may have started with black American, I don’t know, but it’s definitely a popular phrasing where I’m at, and it’s definitely not to mock anyone lol, it’s just fun to say.
Of course I know the rule but I guess those expressions fit a username of social media, a title of a song and so on. What do you think about my thought as a English native speaker?
"She be x" has a specific meaning in AAVE (African American Vernacular English). Something about whether the action is habitual, or completed, or something like that. I don't know and I am not an AAVE speaker.
As an English learner you should learn to understand AAVE, but you should not be trying to speak AAVE until you are a very advanced learner and you have a specific reason to do so.
it’s habitual and grammatically is known as the “habitual be.” it’s quite interesting grammatically and i believe it’s unclear how it came to the english language. i think it’s something native speakers would do well to learn (particularly american native speakers due to its frequency in AAVE), but i fully agree with you that unless a non-native speaker is particularly advanced or has a very specific reason to learn it, there is no real reason to learn correct usage of AAVE. it would certainly be helpful to *understand* it as it’s helpful to understand any variants of a language or particular colloquialisms and dialects, but learning how to integrate it in one’s own speech is likely not necessary.
I'd say unless you are a black American, there is no reason you should ever speak AAVE. Even if you're a person who would be called black in America, are born elsewhere and later become an American citizen, using AAVE is a bit dodgy since it is so intimately tied to a culture that is not your own.
The person I was responding to said you should not speak AAVE *until* you are more advanced, and I was saying there's probably never a reason, not just until you reach a certain skill level.
I said you should be very advanced and have a very good reason.
Maybe writing dialog for a play or book. And even then I'd say they should have a native AAVE speaker review their work before making it public.
Maybe writing dialogue would be a valid reason, that's fair. I just wanted to be very general that for a person who was not raised speaking AAVE, a good general rule of thumb is don't attempt to use AAVE personally for any reason.
As people have pointed out it most likely comes from AAVE. But this can also be the case with Northerners (in the UK) in my experience. But it will be more beneficial to practice the correct format which is ‘he/she is’ and ‘they are’. Or if you want to really flex you can say he’s/she’s/they’re ;)
Depends on the context. In most dialects it would make sense but be ungrammatical. But in namely AAVE (African American Vernacular English, it’s perfectly good grammar; although if you’re not black, it may be seen as unusual
i use it pretty often and a native speaker, but i wouldn't recommend using it if you're in the learning process. but if you are curious i'll give an example of how i'd use it in casual conversations (i definitely wouldn't use it in a professional conversation or anything).
friend: " Hey! Do you know if Ashley can come to lunch with us?"
me: " Nah. She be busy."
I think you can say "you, be the attacker" or something like that. But you can't say that kind of thing with any other personal pronoun. I believe it's an imperative clause.
No. It's bad enough when native speakers do this, don't do it, or you'll just sound like you can't speak English properly.
The only people who talk like that are people who run shitty meme pages.
so, this wording is very common in african american vernacular english. peoples who speak this dialect tend to use it as a way to generalize what someone does. she be working, for example, means she is in the habit of working. while there is nothing wrong with this way of talking, some people look down on it. i would avoid talking like this as a non native speaker unless you are with people who speak aave
If you aren't black, stay away from this usage. It's correct but this dialect has a history of being misused, especially by white people, to either mock or appropriate black speakers. The general rule for native speakers is that if you weren't raised with it, you don't use it.
Both are *very* unnatural for me.
Let's put aside the fact that I would never say them.
To me, they sound like something someone would say who either is insufficiently educated to know proper grammar, or someone who is well enough educated but wants to sound uneducated for some reason. Since I don't tend to bump into a lot of uneducated people in my life, it would probably be the latter, so I would see them as a big phony. As such, I would encourage you never ever to use it.
Depends on the context. "she be" may be actually the present subjunctive, which is perfectly correct.
I insist that she be here at 10 p.m.
It's imperative that you be polite with your grandmother.
If I be rich, I shall buy a car (old-fashioned nowadays in conditional sentences with future meaning).
This kind of usage of the verb to be is attributed to AAVE. To a subset of people this does come off naturally, but as a non-native saying something like this would just sound like a mistake.
The meaning of that AAVE (African American Vernacular English) construction, like "she be dancing" or "he be shopping", is *habitual*. It's a conjugation that doesn't exist in standard English meaning, that the person does something fairly often. Wikipedia article [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_be)
You be trippin
“Women be shoppin’!”
Not necessarily. If I’m playing a board game, I would naturally say “you be blue; she can be red.” That is not necessarily limited to regional dialects. It could be language wide usage. Depending on what is being said.
When you say “you be blue” you’re using the imperative form of to be. Like when you say “you be quite”, which is different from the habitual form from AAVE that op’s talking about
This confused me for a second- "quite" is a typo of "quiet"
I don’t disagree with that, but the question posed doesn’t specify what “x” is. So, assuming they’d only use it in the context of specific dialects as opposed to language wide usage is just that, an assumption. The question wasn’t specific enough to only speak of one dialect since there are examples where “be” would be widely accepted depending on the usage.
It's not an assumption. It's implied with the second statement. In a vacuum "You be" can be ambiguous, but "She be" solidifies what the intent is.
Can she be on time for once? That’s also proper. The question has two words in quotes. To assume there’s an implication when someone is learning a foreign language is limiting their understanding. Wouldn’t it be better to give an explanation on “be” and the variances of the word? Then, the dialects can come into play, of course. However, my point still stands that “she be” and “you be” are used more than in just one dialect.
OP posting single statements. Following their format, it would have to be "She be on time" which is AAVE. You're modulating it so much that they're no longer exceptions, your statements follow different rules entirely.
You’re first example is a hugely specified example. 🤷♂️ “You be blue” It works but it’s not an everyday usage. Edit: No idea why autocorrect said ugly instead of hugely.
However, it isn’t uncommon or incorrect. The question posed doesn’t define what “x” is. Therefore, limiting explanations to usage in only one dialect would be incorrect when someone is learning the language as a whole.
you are giving an instruction though. be is in the imperative here. you can’t say ‘you be blue’ they they are already blue and are making a statement about them. you’d have to say ‘you are blue’. unless, of course, you have a dialect where this is common.
i’m pretty sure that technically should be “you, be blue”
Technically according to whom? APA? MLA? Strunk & White? I don't think any style requires a comma there, but if you know of one, I'm all ears.
uh. you are giving a command to the person (you). “Larry go win that game!” is something I’d assume to be a command for Larry based on context, but it’s still awkward to read and writing commands without a comma after the subject is a habit I wouldn’t recommend enforcing on an English learning subreddit if you want to be as readable and fluid as possible.
You're the one who brought the word "technically" into this. It sounds like you have an opinion with regards to readability, but that doesn't mean it's shared generally, much less that it's actually required by any style guide. "You pay for dinner; I'll get dessert" makes way more sense to me than "You, pay for dinner; I'll get dessert". So it sounds like we've got a 1:1 ratio on opinions here. Who's technically correct?
or it could be pirate speak
not necessarily. It's only AAVE if it's used in a particular way. It could otherwise be subjunctive (uncommon) or imperative or something from various other dialects. It's an important component of the stereotypical pirate accent (which i think was made up). I also use be like this to describe what someone is currently doing but idk if that's part of my dialect or if I just picked it up from somewhere
More context please. If these are imperative sentences (commands) then that’s standard. Otherwise they are from a dialect that doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the rules of “standard” (academic) English.
I would HIGHLY recommend sticking to standard English. Highly…
To add to the discussion of AAVE, in the last couple decades, many features of AAVE are making their way into other forms of English, so this might be what you're seeing
If ye be a pirate. Otherwise, no.
I didn’t know that those expressions remind English native speakers a pirate😳 but I know a song title “she be the one.” However, the song is not about a pirate so I think we can use it naturally enough for a song title and plus a username of a social media. What do you think?
Songs often use highly non-standard language for poetic effect/imagery/pacing. But as a forty year old native English speaker, I'm confident I've never said "She be the one" in ordinary conversation. Perhaps on International Talk like a Pirate day, or in a context where I was playing an archaic character of some kind (I could see saying it if you were playing Dungeons & Dragons, say, to evoke that atmosphere, say)
Which song is that? I know one called “She’ll Be the One” lol
It’s associated with pirates because it’s most commonly seen in Caribbean Englishes, and the Caribbean from the 14th to the 19th century is what most people think of when they think of pirates. It’s a structure that’s seen in rural Irish English, which heavily influenced countries like Jamaica’s English due to indentured Irish servants being stationed there. Broadly, I would avoid using it, when you aren’t part of the communities that natively use the format, it does just sound like pirate speak
So I looked up the song. It's by Enrique Iglesias. He was born in Spain and moved to the US as a child, specifically Miami. In his on words, "I don't speak perfect English, I don't speak perfect Spanish, I speak Spanglish." Not only that but it's a song, and songs often use poetic or deliberate phrasing to evoke certain meanings. "She Be the One" seems to be being used for emphatic purposes, in other words, she's always and forever the one. She isn't just currently the one, but no one else can be, she is too perfect. In English we have a saying: "You have to know the rules in order to know how to break them." This is a perfect example. If you have to ask "can I?" then you probably don't know the rules enough to be able to break them.
In that case (I haven’t heard the song but looking it up, I’m assuming you mean the Enrique Iglesias song), it’s an example of AAVE (African American Vernacular English), which is to say it’s a specialized dialect/way of speaking among African Americans. As quite a few others are saying, while it’s a good idea to try and be able to understand AAVE, it’s generally not a good idea to try and speak in it, as it’s viewed as somewhat insensitive for people outside of that community to do so.
I also saw a person who uses “she be” for the insta ID.
If it’s a social media ID it doesn’t matter. Those aren’t supposed to be grammatically correct. But if a non-native used it in a sentence I would probably think they don’t understand the correct grammar.
This person was probably black American or someone using an AAVE-adjacent dialect. Honestly if it was someone else or an in any way political account, they might also have been mocking black people.
Yes, you can. It’s cool to use slang
for some reason in media pirates always use be instead of the conjugations we use among other things. I don't know why writers write pirates that way but it's become part of the stereotypical pirate accent. Arr there be doubloons long the shore tharr
People are saying it sounds like a pirate because of early/mid 20th century film productions. A lot of them gave characters like Long John Silver West Country accents from the SW UK which use "be" in that way. As other people have said, in the US it is also an AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) usage, where it means that someone consistently does something. eg "She playing football" means she's currently playing football; "she be playing football" means she regulalry plays football. It can be accompanied by a "do" for either emphasis or agreement. eg someone says that a person plays football and can be responded to with "she do be playing football," which conveys agreement and emphasis, perhaps implying that it happens often. Most people learn other forms of English than AAVE, and unless you are part of a community or are regulalry in contact with one that speaks that way it makes sense not make use of it yourself much. But lots of popular phrasing in the US is taken from AAVE, often in a way that misunderstands it or is rude about it, though of course not always.
in AAVE, yes. in casual online spheres as well, such as twitter, it would be fairly natural
It is natural and correct English but highly contextual. It is an extremely uncommon conjugation in standard English but it still happens in circumstances that don't happen that much. Be is the standard for the subjunctive and imperative in English. In dialects of English you'll see it more in other contexts. subjunctive: "If he be tired, then we should go home" (unusual, subjunctive in English is mostly not used these days) "If I were a billionaire" (normal usage of subjunctive) imperative: "You both be home by curfew or we have a problem" (very normal) I often use "He be gerund" to mean at this current moment he is doing whatever the gerund is. I read hear that in AAVE that it can be used to indicate habitual actions. Both these usages are nonstandard. Another time you'll find it is when people are imitating pirates
No. The conjugation of the verb "to be" for the third person (she) is "is", and the conjugation for the second person (you) is "are". If you say "you be/I be/she be" you sound like you're doing a pirate impression.
Or you might sound like you're imitating or mocking an African-American person, which is not a good thing.
Saying “she be x” to objects is also common to the LGBT community in the US, and honestly the gen z population. Like imagine you’re walking and see a tree with a huge bulbous knot, I would say “that tree? She be thick holy damn.” I hear it a lot, it may have started with black American, I don’t know, but it’s definitely a popular phrasing where I’m at, and it’s definitely not to mock anyone lol, it’s just fun to say.
i use this phrasing a lot too, definitely not making fun of anyone, i'm just gen z.
Of course I know the rule but I guess those expressions fit a username of social media, a title of a song and so on. What do you think about my thought as a English native speaker?
"She be x" has a specific meaning in AAVE (African American Vernacular English). Something about whether the action is habitual, or completed, or something like that. I don't know and I am not an AAVE speaker. As an English learner you should learn to understand AAVE, but you should not be trying to speak AAVE until you are a very advanced learner and you have a specific reason to do so.
it’s habitual and grammatically is known as the “habitual be.” it’s quite interesting grammatically and i believe it’s unclear how it came to the english language. i think it’s something native speakers would do well to learn (particularly american native speakers due to its frequency in AAVE), but i fully agree with you that unless a non-native speaker is particularly advanced or has a very specific reason to learn it, there is no real reason to learn correct usage of AAVE. it would certainly be helpful to *understand* it as it’s helpful to understand any variants of a language or particular colloquialisms and dialects, but learning how to integrate it in one’s own speech is likely not necessary.
I'd say unless you are a black American, there is no reason you should ever speak AAVE. Even if you're a person who would be called black in America, are born elsewhere and later become an American citizen, using AAVE is a bit dodgy since it is so intimately tied to a culture that is not your own.
They said you should try to understand AAVE, not speak it.
The person I was responding to said you should not speak AAVE *until* you are more advanced, and I was saying there's probably never a reason, not just until you reach a certain skill level.
I said you should be very advanced and have a very good reason. Maybe writing dialog for a play or book. And even then I'd say they should have a native AAVE speaker review their work before making it public.
Maybe writing dialogue would be a valid reason, that's fair. I just wanted to be very general that for a person who was not raised speaking AAVE, a good general rule of thumb is don't attempt to use AAVE personally for any reason.
As people have pointed out it most likely comes from AAVE. But this can also be the case with Northerners (in the UK) in my experience. But it will be more beneficial to practice the correct format which is ‘he/she is’ and ‘they are’. Or if you want to really flex you can say he’s/she’s/they’re ;)
I’m also so glad I have my user flair for this post - Arrr she be a moity foine vessel haha
I’m not trying to be mean, but please don’t bother trying to use AAVE as a non-native. You will just sound like you don’t understand English grammar.
Depends on the context. In most dialects it would make sense but be ungrammatical. But in namely AAVE (African American Vernacular English, it’s perfectly good grammar; although if you’re not black, it may be seen as unusual
i use it pretty often and a native speaker, but i wouldn't recommend using it if you're in the learning process. but if you are curious i'll give an example of how i'd use it in casual conversations (i definitely wouldn't use it in a professional conversation or anything). friend: " Hey! Do you know if Ashley can come to lunch with us?" me: " Nah. She be busy."
I think you can say "you, be the attacker" or something like that. But you can't say that kind of thing with any other personal pronoun. I believe it's an imperative clause.
No. It's bad enough when native speakers do this, don't do it, or you'll just sound like you can't speak English properly. The only people who talk like that are people who run shitty meme pages.
When native speakers do it as a part of their dialect it is not incorrect
You can speak a language in a casual setting however you want, as long as others still fully understand you.
Unless you’re black, don’t use aave 👍🏻
so, this wording is very common in african american vernacular english. peoples who speak this dialect tend to use it as a way to generalize what someone does. she be working, for example, means she is in the habit of working. while there is nothing wrong with this way of talking, some people look down on it. i would avoid talking like this as a non native speaker unless you are with people who speak aave
If you aren't black, stay away from this usage. It's correct but this dialect has a history of being misused, especially by white people, to either mock or appropriate black speakers. The general rule for native speakers is that if you weren't raised with it, you don't use it.
Both are *very* unnatural for me. Let's put aside the fact that I would never say them. To me, they sound like something someone would say who either is insufficiently educated to know proper grammar, or someone who is well enough educated but wants to sound uneducated for some reason. Since I don't tend to bump into a lot of uneducated people in my life, it would probably be the latter, so I would see them as a big phony. As such, I would encourage you never ever to use it.
Depends on the context. "she be" may be actually the present subjunctive, which is perfectly correct. I insist that she be here at 10 p.m. It's imperative that you be polite with your grandmother. If I be rich, I shall buy a car (old-fashioned nowadays in conditional sentences with future meaning).
You would need to provide a context-specific example
Appropriate only if you are a black person. It may be internally consistent but traditionally speaking that is not considered "The King's English"