Habitual be

Common card · No. 493965

Habitual be, also called invariant be, is the use of an uninflected be (such as "she be singing") instead of Standard English inflection (such as "she sings") to convey habitual or extended actions like a habit of singing, commonly displayed in African-American English (AAE), Caribbean English and Hiberno-English. In AAE, this use of be indicates that a subject repeatedly does an action or embodies a trait, whereas in General American English an inflection of the verb to be (such as "she was singing") means only that an individual has done an action in a particular tense, and "she sings" is used for the habitual form. Despite common misconceptions, AAE does not simply replace is with be across all contexts and tenses, nor does this swap provide no additional meaning to a phrase. This be usage in AAE marks a habitual grammatical aspect which Standard English does not explicitly distinguish: to say a kitten be napping is different than to say a kitten is napping, and suggests the kitten naps...

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