Be

Random post for sure.
But I can't help myself.

The English verb "to be".
It has to be one of my all time favorites!
It's one of the few English "irregular" verbs.
But most English speakers never really stop to think just how much we use this verb, and how many different conjugations we have of it!

Present tense of "Be":

I am
You are
She/he/it is
We are
They are


This is one of the few verbs that changes for more subjects than just third person! This absolutely facinates me.

Especially for how strange the verb "Be" gets in the past tense:

I/he/she/it was
You/we/they were

"Be" in the present/past perfect:

Been

"Be" in the progressive:

Being

"Be" in command form:

Be. (As in, "[you] be good!")


Though English subjunctive isn't as common as subjunctive mood in Spanish and French, we do have it, but most of our verbs don't change. Sometimes though, in certain cases, we do put a subjunctive mood on the verb "be".

Ex: Be it truth or fiction, someone's always got a story to tell.

In the example above, "be" isn't in any of the other tenses. We put a subjunctive mood on it in this case because we don't know for sure; it's the unknown.

The verb "to be" is crazy! But I think that's why I like it so much.

I swear, if I wasn't a CDG major, I'd be a linguistics major for sure. I love that kind of stuff.