Talk:Be

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"To be" is also used to express the passive voice in English, thus:
 * "This book is often criticized by academics." is the passive form of the sentence: "Academics often criticize this book."

Having been a contributor to this page, I think all this is very poorly analyzed and should be redone. Even my dictionary (American Heritage) does not call the meaning of "to be" as existence, a "copula." My linguistic training agrees with this notion, as well. RoseParks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.14.192.xxx (talk) 10:34, 7 May 2001 (UTC)

Yeah, that kind of bugs me too. In a simple existence statement, "be" is the predicate itself, not a copula. One problem is that the concept of "copula" itself is not entirely solid. There's some good information here that should be retained, but it is somewhat unclear. I'll do a page on "copula" that we can link to make it easier to rewrite this one. --LDC —Preceding undated comment added at 16:45, 7 May 2001 (UTC)

Who wrote that there's no verb "be" in Russian? That's silly. Yah shouldn't write stuff about what you don't know...first, say no falsehoods. (The philosopher's adaptation of "First, do no harm.") --LMS —Preceding undated comment added at 15:43, 25 February 2002 (UTC)
 * In the Russian language, the verb byt'  is the infinitive of "to be." The third person singular, yest'  means "is" (and, interestingly enough, it is also the infinitive "to eat") but there is no present- but a future-tense (budet) and a subjunctive (byl/a by) copula in the Russian language.  Yest' (in the non-gustatory sense) is restricted in use to express existence; On yest'  means "He exists," while On yest' krasivyi is nonsense (though it is how an English speaker might try to translate "He is handsome").  There is a past-tense copula in the Russian language.  E.g., one can say, Ona byla krasiva: "She was beautiful."
 * First of all, the verb byt'  in Russian does have a past tense, byl (but no perfect form, by the way). Secondly, I see little interest in the fact that yest'  means both "to eat" and "is" (although some interest is in their similarity - both going back to PIE, also 1st person present used to be yesm', much like the Latin sum). In addition, one can always say On yavlayetsya krasivym, "He is beautiful", so it's incorrect to say Russian can't use an auxiliary verb in the present tense. Finally, perhaps it all should be moved to To be (verb)? --Uriyan —Preceding undated comment added at 12:40, 30 April 2002 (UTC)
 * Is == eats? Compare German Man ist was man isst. You are what you eat. Compare Frank Zappa's song "You Are What You Is". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Damian Yerrick (talk • contribs) 16:36, 30 April 2002 (UTC)
 * "Is" == "to eat". These words are often similar in IE languages (originating in PIE stems es-, and ed-, respectively - and their similarity is also interesting). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uriyan (talk • contribs) 23:08, 30 April 2002 (UTC)

Requested move 4 July 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved (non-admin closure) >>> Extorc . talk  11:39, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

BE → Be – The discussion at Talk:Bé brought attention to this page which was created on May 10, 2001, less than four months after Wikipedia's opening day. Since virtually every entry listed upon this disambiguation page is indicated as "Be", rather than "BE", there is no good reason to capitalize the "E". — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 22:29, 4 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Support, we should prefer words to abbreviations in the dabpage title. See WP:DABNAME. 162 etc. (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support Per nom. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 23:13, 6 July 2022 (UTC)