24 October 2022
The verb to be is highly irregular. The different forms of the word appear very different, with no apparent logic underlying the conjugations:
PRESENT-DAY TO BE:
| INFINITIVE | to be |
| PRESENT INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | am |
| 2nd Person Sing. | are |
| 3rd Person Sing. | is |
| Plural | are |
| PAST INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | was |
| 2nd Person Sing. | were |
| 3rd Person Sing. | was |
| Plural | were |
| PARTICIPLES | |
| Present Participle | being |
| Past Participle | been |
This situation is a result of our modern verb being a jumble of three distinct Proto-Indo-European roots: *bheuə-, *es-, and *wes-. The first of these conflations occurred before English was a recorded language. By the time we reach the Old English period, the *es- and *wes- forms had already combined into a single verb, wesan. The conjugation of wesan in the West Saxon dialect is:
OLD ENGLISH WESAN:
| INFINITIVE | wesen |
| PRESENT INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | eom |
| 2nd Person Sing. | eart |
| 3rd Person Sing. | is |
| Plural | sindon, sin, sint |
| PAST INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | wæs |
| 2nd Person Sing. | wære |
| 3rd Person Sing. | wæs |
| Plural | wæron |
| PARTICIPLES | |
| Present Participle | wesende |
| Past Participle | (ge)wesen |
Note: the conjugations I’m presenting here are greatly simplified. Not only am I omitting forms, such as the subjunctive, but I’m also eliding regional and temporal differences. Both Old and Middle English were spoken over the course of several centuries and those languages comprise multiple dialects. In actuality, there has been a great deal more variety in the forms of to be, but the main thrust of the development of the verb is perhaps best seen in this simplified presentation.
Our modern present and past indicative forms are taken from wesan: am, are, is, was, and were. The present indicative forms of wesan are taken from the *es- root, and the past indicative forms are from *wes-.
The second verb in Old English meaning to be is beon. The West Saxon inflections are as follows:
OLD ENGLISH BEON:
| INFINITIVE | beon |
| PRESENT INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | beo |
| 2nd Person Sing. | bist |
| 3rd Person Sing. | biþ |
| Plural | beoþ |
Note that beon has no past tense, it can only denote the present. As a result, Old English use of beon sometimes connotes a sense of futurity, of continuous existence now and into the future. Our modern infinitive and participial forms be, been, and being, are from beon.
The conflation of beon and wesan occurred during the Early Middle English period and was complete by the beginning of the 13th century. Some of the older forms, however, survive to this day in regional dialects. Here are the inflections in the thirteenth-century dialect of West Midlands of England:
MIDDLE ENGLISH:
| INFINITIVE | beon |
| PRESENT INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | am, beo |
| 2nd Person Sing. | art, bist |
| 3rd Person Sing. | is, bið |
| Plural | beoð |
| PAST INDICATIVE | |
| 1st Person Sing. | wes |
| 2nd Person Sing. | were |
| 3rd Person Sing. | wes |
| Plural | weren |
| PAST PARTICIPLE | ibeon |
You can clearly see the resemblance to the Present-Day conjugation in the Middle English forms.
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary Indo-European Roots Appendix, 2022.
Burrow, J.A. and Turville-Petre Thorlac. A Book of Middle English, third edition. Maldon, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2005, 36–37.
Mitchell, Bruce and Fred C. Robinson. A Guide to Old English, eighth edition. Maldon, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, §127, 51.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, November 2010, s.v. be, v.