And the linguist Anatoly Liberman agrees: While it’s unclear where the usage came from, what is clear is that it likely didn’t originate in the United States, let alone in the South or among Black Americans. In these examples, the first is from England, the second from Ireland, and the third from the United States. Trial of Frederick Eberle and Others, at a Nisi Prius Court, Held at Philadelphia, July 1816 (1817).Plebeian Politics, or The Principles and Practices of Certain Mole-Eyed Maniacs Vulgarly Called Warrites (1801).Here are a few more, but from the turn of the 19th century: In this example, the person isn’t portrayed as an uneducated bumpkin, but as a “gentleman”. The life of John Metcalf, commonly called blind Jack of Knaresborough. Metcalf took it for granted that his companion had seen one of these but for good reasons declined asking him whereabout the light was and to divert his attention from this object, asked him, “Do you not see two lights one to the right the other to the left?” “No,” replied the gentleman “ I seen but one light, that there on the right.”-“Well then, Sir,” said Metcalf, “that is Harrogate.” Metcalf, J. One could argue that this usage mirrors I have seen rather than I saw, but there are still examples of the I saw pattern in the 18th century: The history of the valorous and witty knight-errant Don Quixote of the Mancha. I am she, which sometime immured within the Limits of Honesty, did lead a most contented Life, until it opened the Gates of her Recollection and Weariness, though to thine Importunity, and seeming just and amorous Requests, and render’d up the keys of her Liberty, a Grief by thee so ill recompenced, as the finding myself in so remote a Place as this, wherein you have met with me, and I seen you, may clearly testifyĬervantes, M. The earliest known recording I could find of I seen was from a 1733 edition of a 1620 translation of Don Quixote: Interestingly, however, the usage has been around longer than either the accent of the Deep South or AAVE. It’s often used to portray AAVE or Southern American stereotypes. I seen is certainly-uh-seen as non-standard and even uneducated. Were the people who told you to never use I see right? Well, sort of. Is I seen wrong?īack to the first paragraph. Its construction mirrors that of the simple past, but uses the present perfect form instead. If I had written, “I seen the movie”, there is no helper verb. Notice the difference in usage between the two examples? Example #2 uses a helper (or auxiliary) verb to help create the present perfect tense.Īnd that’s where the confusion comes in. We’d use this if we wanted to communicate that we had seen the movie but that when we saw it was irrelevant. The second example is in the present perfect, and it wouldn’t communicate a specific point in time. We’d use it to refer to a specific moment: in this case, perhaps we saw the movie on Friday. You see, seen is the past participle form of to see, and we use the past participle when communicating in the present perfect tense, which refers to an unspecified point in time. Perhaps they suggested that you use I saw or I have seen instead. At some point, someone may have told you that you should never use I seen, that it was a construction only uneducated people use.
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