this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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[–] charonn0@startrek.website 48 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Be, is, are, was, am, were, being, been... are all the same word.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Languages that conjugate every verb for every person:

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same with “go” and “went”.

[–] Lauchs@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"To be" averbs, at least in romance languages usually have a bunch of different forms. "To have" usually too but English is a bit of an exception there.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] moistclump@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Or not to have…

[–] wfh@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago

"To be" being highly irregular il a common feature of a lot of Indo-European languages. But there's worse. In Spanish, "ser" and "estar" both mean "to be", but have wildly different meanings and cannot be substituted for one another.

[–] viralJ@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

"be" is an irregular verb in all languages, so it's not unique to English. Bonus fun fact: Russian doesn't have the verb "to be".

[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yes, and I feel like it’s even more irregular in Russian than just not existing. It’s not used in present tense as a copula, so in most cases where you would expect it in English. However it absolutely exists – быть – and is used like normal verbs in both past and future tense.

For example: «я здесь» – “I am here” (same word order, but this sentence has no verb), but «я был здесь» – “I was here”

And in the cases where it is used in present tense, there is a single conjugation regardless of subject: есть (in contrast to all other verbs, I assume at least, which all have distinct conjugations for 1/2/3rd person singular/plural).

A simple example for this would probably be sentences with “there is”, affirming the existence of something, as in “there is a bathroom” – «ванная есть». Contrived example for sure but I can’t think of something better right now.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Was going to reply that, it's not that Russian doesn't have it, it just gets omitted in the most common form.

But also one interesting thing is that from the examples you gave I can know your gender, because the verb to be is gendered in the past in Russian, which is very unique, I don't know of any other language where verbs are gendered.

[–] kureta@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Not in Turkish. It is "olmak" but the actual "to be" as it is used in "I am, they were, etc." is, now unused "imek". it has become a suffix and it is completely regular. Just i + person suffix.

[–] Phen@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 2 weeks ago

And it has multiple meanings. "you are sick" can mean that you're currently sick but can also mean that you're a sick person. Other languages usually differentiate the verb in those two cases