Okay you copied that from an online encyclopedia!
Bob S
> On May 24, 2017, at 14:47 , Mark Wieder via use-livecode
> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
> > Syntax is an emotive issue (I could beat Python to death with some of the
> > decisions they have made about syntax - but yet I still use it and slightly
> > enjoy doing so for the purposes I use it for) - but it is not the
> > be-all-and-end-all.
>
> I could say the same for any of the computer languages I use.
> And not just computer languages- the various forms of the irregular verbs for
> instance...
>
> Old English beon, beom, bion "be, exist, come to be, become, happen," from
> Proto-Germanic *biju- "I am, I will be." This "b-root" is from PIE root
> *bheue- "to be, exist, grow," and in addition to the words in English it
> yielded German present first and second person singular (bin, bist, from Old
> High German bim "I am," bist "thou art"), Latin perfective tenses of esse
> (fui "I was," etc.), Old Church Slavonic byti "be," Greek phu- "become," Old
> Irish bi'u "I am," Lithuanian bu'ti "to be," Russian byt' "to be," etc.
>
> The modern verb to be in its entirety represents the merger of two
> once-distinct verbs, the "b-root" represented by be and the am/was verb,
> which was itself a conglomerate. Roger Lass ("Old English") describes the
> verb as "a collection of semantically related paradigm fragments," while
> Weekley calls it "an accidental conglomeration from the different Old English
> dial[ect]s." It is the most irregular verb in Modern English and the most
> common. Collective in all Germanic languages, it has eight different forms in
> Modern English:
>
> BE (infinitive, subjunctive, imperative)
> AM (present 1st person singular)
> ARE (present 2nd person singular and all plural)
> IS (present 3rd person singular)
> WAS (past 1st and 3rd persons singular)
> WERE (past 2nd person singular, all plural; subjunctive)
> BEING (progressive & present participle; gerund)
> BEEN (perfect participle).
>
> Old English am had two plural forms: 1. sind/sindon, sie and 2. earon/aron.
> The s- form (also used in the subjunctive) fell from English in the early
> 13c. (though its cousin continues in German sind, the 3rd person plural of
> "to be") and was replaced by forms of be, but aron (see are) continued, and
> as am and be merged it encroached on some uses that previously had belonged
> to be. By the early 1500s it had established its place in standard English.
>
> That but this blow Might be the be all, and the end all.
> ["Macbeth" I.vii.5]
>
> --
> Mark Wieder
> ahsoftw...@gmail.com
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