Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
This is interesting. my guess is that the OP's MIL is not AA. She just does not use the queens English.
So? Whether she's black or white, she's making flawless use of the habitual be. Perhaps she grew up around a lot of AAs, or maybe she just has a flexible ear and is good at picking up language dialects. "I be missing you" communicates perfectly that she, the grandma, is habitually in the existential state of missing her grandchild. It communicates something more nuanced than "I missed you".
She's not a speaker of Gaelic, is she?
Seriously, though, it's an awesome bit of linguistic subtlety, and OP should appreciate it.
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