How to pronounce BEEN - It's not what you think

Hey, how've you been? Bean, what? 

We don't actually pronounce this  word this way in American English. 

So the pronunciation of this is 'be'.  But the pronunciation of this is 'been'. 

We change the vowel, now it's either IH as in SIT,  bin, which is just like this word, "bin", like a  

trash bin, or we can also pronounce it [bɛn] which  is another word in American English. It's short  

for the name Benjamin like my friend Ben. So we don't say [bin] for this word. And  

it's the only word that I know of in American  English where EE does not equal the EE vowel.  

The most common pronunciation here, [bin]. Hey, how've you been?