The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE

The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE The Many Forms of the Verb TO BE By Maeve Maddox After reading O Second Person Where Art Thou reader Bill G asks: How can I explain to my students why the singular â€Å"you† takes the plural verb â€Å"are?† Is there something obvious I am missing? Even â€Å"thou† took â€Å"art.† What is the history of this shift? The answer to the first part of this question is that are is the form of the verb that goes with you. If you can be either singular or plural, so can are: You are the one person I love. (singular) You are the best friends in the world. (plural) The only other word for are that ever went with you was sind (or sindon). Clearly, that one hasnt survived into Modern English. Of all Modern English verbs, to be has the most forms: am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been. In addition, the helping verb will is used to form a future tense with be (e.g. I will be with you in a minute.) The forms are so different in appearance that they dont seem to belong to the same verb. The fact is, they dont. Oh, they do now, but they came from three different roots and merged in the Old English verbs beon and wesan. (NOTE: Since I dont know how to import the special OE symbols, Ill use th for the /th/ sound and y for the yot.) In a conjugation of the Old English (West Saxon dialect) verb beon/wesan, todays English speaker will recognize the modern forms in: ic eom =I am thu eart =thou art ic waes =I was ye waere =you were You are, however, was written in West Saxon as ye sind. Although ye earun or ye aron did exist in a northern dialect of Old English, sind is the word for are in most of the Old English literature that survives. But for a fluke of history, we could just as easily be saying you sind as you are. An interesting footnote is that English once had three grammatical numbers and not just two. Modern English has two numbers: singular and plural. Old English had three: singular, dual, and plural. Each number had its own set of pronouns: First person: ic=I wit =two-person we we =more-than-two-persons we Second person: thu = thou yit =you two ye =yall Third person: he =he hit =it heo =she hie =they (For a complete explanation, see the relevant sections in Sweets Anglo-Saxon Primer or Wardales An Old English Grammar.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Yours faithfully or Yours sincerely?3 Cases of Complicated HyphenationThe Uses of â€Å"The†