The habitual be is one of the primary characteristics of African-American Vernacular English, or Standard African-American English, or Ebonics, or whatever term you prefer. In it, the particle "be" is used as a verb prefix to indicate a state of habitual action.

To illustrate, let me describe one of the linguistic surveys that was used to academically establish the existence of the habitual be. In it a group of black children and a group of white children were shown two pictures of Sesame Street characters; one was a picture of Cookie Monster, sleeping, and the other was of Elmo, eating cookies. They were asked, "Who is eating cookies?", and "Who be eating cookies?" The white children pointed to the picture of Elmo for both questions, while the black children answered Elmo to the first, and Cookie Monster to the second.

The use of the habitual be is often considered "uneducated", which is true only inasmuch as it's certainly not a part of Standard American English. The Celtic languages retain a verb form from older Indo-European languages which is used to indicate habitual action, and it is also present in many West African languages, which is presumably how the habitual be made its way into English as part of the process of Creolization.

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