Have always wondered about this. This is such an enormously famous quote although the exact choice of words has always perplexed me. Initially figured it is an artifact of translation, but then, wouldn’t you translate it into the new language in a way that is grammatical? Or maybe there is some intention behind this weird phrasing that is just lost on me? I’m not a linguist so eli5
In: 1806
It does make sense in old-fashioned English.
So the tense being used here is the perfect tense. It’s a fairly normal way of forming the past tense in many languages. You have a subject pronoun (I), your auxilliary verb (have), and your past participle “become”.
In modern English we only form the perfect using one auxilliary, that being “have”. I have eaten. I have gone. She has died. Many European languages (French, German and Italian do it, probably others too) have two different auxiliary verbs, “have” and “be”. Most of the time you would use “have”, but in some instances, you would use “be”. The two main ones in most languages are to denote some kind of change, either in location (I am gone, I am arrived, I am come) or in state (I am died, I am grown, I am become).
English also used to have this. So whereas nowadays you would say “I have become”, this is a change of state, so in older English you’d write “I am become”. Same in German (Ich bin geworden) and Italian (Sono diventato/a).
This is also why in Silent Night, we have the line “Christ the saviour is come”. Because it’s an old-fashioned song using old-fashioned English. A more modern translation would say “Christ the saviour has come”.
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