Re: Grammatical Gender

 

 

 

 

 

>

'am', are' and 'is' for the same word, I mean, they all mean "er" in my language (Swedish är)? So, perhaps as a native speaker of the language, you are the one I should ask: Why do you all do a silly thing like that?

We don’t!   Some people say “I am, you am, we am…”  Others say “I be, you be, he be….”  So the real question is how one dialect became normalised, and was given status over the others.

 

Another kind of answer (I’m sure you know this) is that irregular forms survive in common words, and very irregular forms in very common words.  It’s part of the process of social bonding in which language learning takes place.

 

A third response is to consider the joy of the English verb “to be”.   “Am” preserves the –mi ending we see in Greek –mi verbs and all verbs in Sanskrit.  The three PIE roots for being (*bhu, *wes, *Hes) are all preserved in English.

 

Peter