gnumatt

Black English

The Wire Episode 16

I was reading the forums for The Wire when I caught this tidbit. Someone else was complaining about the dialogue in the show and the grammar of the phrase “He be late”. That garnered this response:

Ok, Let me explain. In Black English, there is a separate tense called “invariant be.” This form is only used to express a continuous state of being, as in the following: “He be stupid” means he is stupid now, he always was stupid, and he always will be stupid. “That be the exit” means that is and always was the exit. The “invariant be” does not exist in standard English. This form is never used to express temporary states, like “he be late” unless the person is continuosly late. In BE, a temporary state would be expressed as “he late,” because contractions are deleted in BE, as they are in most dialects.

It’s details like this about The Wire that continue to impress me.