To be or not to be¶
The verb “be”¶
The verb be is a linguistic complex: rather than evolving from a single root, it was stitched together from three completely different PIE verbs over thousands of years.
Note
In linguistics, this phenomenon is called “suppletion”, when a single verb paradigm borrows forms from unrelated roots to fill out its conjugation table (much like how go borrowed its past tense went from the unrelated verb wend).
The three ancestral roots¶
Every form of be used today traces back to one of four PIE roots that existed over 5,000 years ago:
PIE Root |
Original Meaning |
Proto-Germanic |
Modern English Forms |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
*h₁es- |
“to be, exist” |
*immi / *isti |
am, is, are |
|
*bheuH- |
“to grow, become, come into being” |
*beu- |
be, been, being |
|
*wes- |
“to remain, dwell, live, be” |
*wesaną |
was, were |
PIE roots¶
The Three Distinct Semantic Worlds
To a PIE speaker 5,000 years ago, these three roots covered entirely different scenarios:
Static identity¶
Modern English descendants: English am, is, are
*es- = Static identity & pure existence
Original Meaning: “To exist inherently” or “to be [a specific identity].”
The Vibe: Permanent, unyielding identity.
That man [is] my brother
God [exists].
Dynamic process & growth¶
Modern English descendants: be, been, being
**bʰu*ː- = Dynamic process & growth
Original Meaning: “To sprout,” “to emerge,” or “to come into being.”
The Vibe: Transition, physical growth, or entering a new state.
The seed [grows/emerges] into a tree
He [becomes] angry.
Physical dwelling¶
Modern English descendants: was, were
*wes- = Physical dwelling & spatial presence
Original Meaning: “To dwell,” “to lodge,” or “to pass the night in a physical place.”
The Vibe: Physical presence tied to a location or a period of time.
The traveler [lodges/dwells] in the tent tonight.
Note
If you told a PIE speaker that a single word meant “I exist eternally,” “I am growing into something,” and “I stayed at a hotel last night,” they would have found it confusingly vague.
The “To be” patch work¶
*ROOT 1: es- (Identity / Existence) |
*ROOT 2: bheu- (Growth / Becoming) |
*ROOT 3: wes- (Dwelling / Remaining) |
|---|---|---|
am |
be |
was |
is |
been |
were |
are |
being |
This didn’t happen overnight. In Old English (around 1000 CE), speakers actually maintained a distinction between Root 1 (*es-) and Root 2 (*bʰuː-):
The eom group (am, is, are): Used for current, immediate reality (“I am here right now”).
The bēon group (be, shall be): Used specifically for future time, habitual actions, or eternal truths, “Trees be green in summer” or “I be going tomorrow”.
Middle English simplified its grammar between 1100 and 1500 CE, and instead of keeping different verbs for “immediate existence” versus “habitual/future existence,” they merged the two systems into one single grid, assigning:
am/is/are to the present tense
be/been to infinitives and participles.
Note
Spanish famously splits the concept of “to be” into two entirely separate verbs: ser and estar.
The journey to abstract grammar¶
To a modern speaker, saying “I was tired” contains zero physical or spatial imagery.
Abstract grammar doesn’t exist at the start of a language. Human minds cannot invent pure, abstract grammatical particles out of thin air.
Instead, languages create abstract tools by taking concrete, physical, spatial experiences and slowly stripping away their physical meaning over centuries.
Linguists call this process grammaticalization or semantic bleaching.
The Journey from “space” to pure time:
To express the abstract idea of “existed in a past state,” ancient PIE speakers had to grab a concrete physical verb that everyone already understood.
They chose **wes-*, which meant “to lodge, dwell, or pass the night in a physical space.”
The shift from spatial dwelling to abstract past tense unfolded in three cognitive steps:
I lodged/dwelled in that cabin (spatial, physical place)
I remained/stayed in that state (durative, time+pace)
I was in at state (abstract past, pure tense)
All that survived was: duration in a prior state.
We do this because time is invisible, but space is tangible.
You can see a path, touch a wall, or feel yourself standing in a room.
You cannot touch “yesterday” or “the future.”
Because space is concrete, human systematically use spatial coordinates as metaphors to build temporal grammar.
We do this every day without realizing it:
A long meeting (length in space to duration in time
A short break
We are moving towards a crisis (physical motion to future time)
I’m going to study (physical orientation to timeline)
Looking forward to the weekend
Putting the past behind us
Note
Spanish “Estar” comes directly from the Latin verb stāre, which meant “to stand on your feet”
French “Venir de” uses the physical verb for “to come from [a place]” to build a past tense
Swahili “Kutoka” uses the physical verb meaning “to come out of [a space]” as an abstract marker for “since” or “from a time.”