The English Oracle

What's this tense called: "I been done ate"?

--------------------------------------------------
Rise to the top 3% as a developer or hire one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Secret Catacombs

--

Chapters
00:00 What'S This Tense Called: &Quot;I Been Done Ate&Quot;?
01:28 Accepted Answer Score 12
01:56 Answer 2 Score 0
02:10 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#americanenglish #dialects

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 12


In Wikipedia and this article by Joan Fickett, it makes the distinction between recent past and pre-recent past:

Recent:

She done work.

Pre-recent:

I been seen him.

Edit: Still trying to figure out the name for the "been done" + verb tense, which is yet another tense/aspect that doesn't exist in Standard English.




ANSWER 2

Score 0


This seems a lot like where I might say "I have been done eating for quite some time now." Sounds the same tense with just the "have" omitted and the action verb cast to the past tense.