# Origin of 'to be' and 'I am'



## Roel~

What's the origin of these words? Somebody explained me that the origin of 'am' is from Sanskrit, but I couldn't find anywhere what the origin of these words is. The strange thing is that they don't seem to resemble any other German language or Roman languages.


----------



## killerbee256

Here is what Wiktionary says
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#Etymology 
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/am#Etymology


----------



## Cenzontle

Those etymologies in the links from killerbee256 look reliable.  How nice to find that "am" is thought to be from something that might sound like "is me"!
Be careful about saying an ordinary word in English is "from" Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is often mentioned in extended English etymologies, but only because something is *cognate with* a Sanskrit word.
English and Sanskrit, being both Indo-European languages, have many words with a common ancestor.
But direct borrowings from Sanskrit into English have happened only in relatively modern times, mostly abstract vocabulary about philosophy, yoga, etc.


----------



## marrish

^I agree with the above, well said.


----------



## Roel~

Cenzontle said:


> Those etymologies in the links from killerbee256 look reliable.  How nice to find that "am" is thought to be from something that might sound like "is me"!
> Be careful about saying an ordinary word in English is "from" Sanskrit.
> Sanskrit is often mentioned in extended English etymologies, but only because something is *cognate with* a Sanskrit word.
> English and Sanskrit, being both Indo-European languages, have many words with a common ancestor.
> But direct borrowings from Sanskrit into English have happened only in relatively modern times, mostly abstract vocabulary about philosophy, yoga, etc.



Hmmm, the person from whom I have heard it said that some person from India explained it to her.


----------



## berndf

Roel~ said:


> Hmmm, the person from whom I have heard it said that some person from India explained it to her.


Claiming that _am_ is derived from Sanskrit is clearly a confusion of _etymon_ and _cognate_. Sanskrit is often regarded as the closest approximation to Proto-Indo-European among the well attested languages (Hittite is probably even closer to the proto language but less well attested). This is sometimes misunderstood to mean that Sanskrit is the origin of the Indo-European language group.


----------



## Roy776

The oldest form of 'to be' I can provide you with existed in Old English in the form of 'beon'. The oldest of 'am' is also from Old English and is the first person singular of the verb 'sindon'. It might be necessary to mention that Old English had three verbs for the meaning of 'to be', each of them differing in usage, conjugation and availability in tenses.

The three verbs were 'beon', 'wesan' and 'sindon'.

Sindon was conjugated as follows (Present, Present Subjunctive):
1ps - eom, sîe
2ps - eart, sîe
3ps - is, sîe
Plural - sind, sîen

Beon's conjugation (Present, Pres. Subj., Imperative):
1ps - beo, beo
2ps - bist, beo, beo
3ps - bið, beo
Plural - beoð, beon, beoð
Present participle: beonde
Past participle: gebeon

Wesan's conjugation (Present, Past, Pres. Subj., Past Subj., Imperative):
1ps - wese, waes, wese, waere,
2ps - wesst, waere, wese, waere, wes
3ps - west, waes, wese, waere,
Plural - wesað, waeron, wesen, waeren, wesað
Present participle: wesende

As you can see, the forms of have merged to form one verb only. Today's 'to be' has the following:

Infinitive of 'beon' (to be)
*Present tense forms of 'sindon'* (I am, thou art, he is), though having adopted 'are' as the plural.
*Present subjunctive forms of 'beon'* (be)
*Past forms of 'wesan' *(was, were)
*Past subjunctive forms of 'wesan'* (were)
*Imperative of 'beon' *(be!)

Hope it helps!
(Ic hope þaet hit hilpeþ!)


----------



## Roel~

berndf said:


> Claiming that _am_ is derived from Sanskrit is clearly a confusion of _etymon_ and _cognate_. Sanskrit is often regarded as the closest approximation to Proto-Indo-European among the well attested languages (Hittite is probably even closer to the proto language but less well attested). This is sometimes misunderstood to mean that Sanskrit is the origin of the Indo-European language group.



Yes, I knew that Sanskrit is Indo-european, I didn't know though in how far it is similar to other Indo-European languages, except for that some basic words seem to be similar. Isn't Lithuanian the language which kept the most Indo-European words which are most close to what the original ones sounded like? When I looked for university education in linguistics, the study programme contained Lithuanian because it seems to still contain a lot of traits from the first Indo-European language which was Proto Indo-European.


----------



## berndf

Roel~ said:


> Yes, I knew that Sanskrit is Indo-european, I didn't know though in how far it is similar to other Indo-European languages, except for that some basic words seem to be similar. Isn't Lithuanian the language which kept the most Indo-European words which are most close to what the original ones sounded like? When I looked for university education in linguistics, the study programme contained Lithuanian because it seems to still contain a lot of traits from the first Indo-European language which was Proto Indo-European.


The significance of Vedic Sanskrit is that it is the oldest attested IE language (apart from Hittite) and is believed to reflect most accurately the late PIE declension and conjugation system (Hittite is believed to have split from PIE earlier and its declension system is believed to represents and earlier development stage with fewer cases and only two instead of three genders).

The interesting thing in the context of this thread is that Vedic Sanskrit retained the athematic conjugations _-mi, -si, -ti_ which exist only in traces in other IE language and which explain the form 1st person forms _εἰμί _in Greek, _sum _in Latin and _am_ (< PGerm _*immi_) in English.


----------



## fdb

berndf said:


> Vedic Sanskrit retained the athematic conjugations _-mi, -si, -ti_ which exist only in traces in other IE language



-_mi_ etc. are the normal suffixes for the present indicative active also in classical (post-Vedic) Sanskrit, Avestan and Old Persian. In Sanskrit, Young Avestan and Old Persian -_mi _has spread even to the thematic verbs, and survives as -m still in New Persian and other modern Iranian languages.


----------



## Dhira Simha

> Isn't Lithuanian the language which kept the most Indo-European words



Lithuanian is important for  the IE historical linguistics but this is clearly an exaggeration. It is all explained very well in "Lithuanian Linguistic Nationalism and the Cult of Antiquity" by Scott Spires  [url]http://www.researchgate.net/publication/22951...[/URL] .


----------



## Wolverine9

berndf said:


> The significance of Vedic Sanskrit is that it is the oldest attested IE language (apart from Hittite)



Is Vedic Sanskrit older than Mycenaean Greek?


----------



## Dhira Simha

> The interesting thing in the context of this thread is that Vedic Sanskrit retained the athematic conjugations _-mi, -si, -ti_ which exist only in traces in other IE language



Why should we go this far, they  are well preserved in Old. Slavonic



Sing.DualPlural1jes-*m**ǐ*jes-*vě*jes-*m**ǔ*2je-*si*jes-*ta*jes-*te*3jes-*t**ǔ*jes-*te*sǫ-*t**ǔ*(jes-*t**ǐ* )(su-*t**ǐ**)*


In parentheses modern Rus. forms


----------



## fdb

Wolverine9 said:


> Is Vedic Sanskrit older than Mycenaean Greek?




This is, as the hackneyed phrase has it, a good question. We do not in fact have any reliable evidence for the date of the Vedas, or, for that matter, of the Avesta.


----------



## Stoggler

Roy776 said:


> The oldest form of 'to be' I can provide you with existed in Old English in the form of 'beon'. The oldest of 'am' is also from Old English and is the first person singular of the verb 'sindon'. It might be necessary to mention that Old English had three verbs for the meaning of 'to be', each of them differing in usage, conjugation and availability in tenses.
> 
> The three verbs were 'beon', 'wesan' and 'sindon'.
> 
> Sindon was conjugated as follows (Present, Present Subjunctive):
> 1ps - eom, sîe
> 2ps - eart, sîe
> 3ps - is, sîe
> Plural - sind, sîen
> 
> Beon's conjugation (Present, Pres. Subj., Imperative):
> 1ps - beo, beo
> 2ps - bist, beo, beo
> 3ps - bið, beo
> Plural - beoð, beon, beoð
> Present participle: beonde
> Past participle: gebeon
> 
> Wesan's conjugation (Present, Past, Pres. Subj., Past Subj., Imperative):
> 1ps - wese, waes, wese, waere,
> 2ps - wesst, waere, wese, waere, wes
> 3ps - west, waes, wese, waere,
> Plural - wesað, waeron, wesen, waeren, wesað
> Present participle: wesende
> 
> As you can see, the forms of have merged to form one verb only. Today's 'to be' has the following:
> 
> Infinitive of 'beon' (to be)
> *Present tense forms of 'sindon'* (I am, thou art, he is), though having adopted 'are' as the plural.
> *Present subjunctive forms of 'beon'* (be)
> *Past forms of 'wesan' *(was, were)
> *Past subjunctive forms of 'wesan'* (were)
> *Imperative of 'beon' *(be!)
> 
> Hope it helps!
> (Ic hope þaet hit hilpeþ!)



Thanks for that Roy.  Do we know how those three verbs were used?  Was there a similar usage as in the two Spanish verbs for "to be" (for example)?

Ic þe þancie


----------



## Ben Jamin

It seems that „sindon” is a cognate of Latin „esse” and Slavic “byti (1st person: sem, sam, jsem, jestem).


----------



## berndf

Stoggler said:


> Thanks for that Roy.  Do we know how those three verbs were used?  Was there a similar usage as in the two Spanish verbs for "to be" (for example)?
> 
> Ic þe þancie


_Seon _(not _*sindon_) and _wesan _merged already in Proto-Germanic (I continue to use the OE infinitives as verb names). _Seon_ meant _to be, to exist _in a timeless way and therefore lacked a past tense (aorist and perfect in PIE). _Wesan_ meant _to dwell, to stay_. In this respect, it is similar to the opposition _ser _(<_esse = to be_) and _estar _(<_stare=to stand, to remain_) in Spanish. In Germanic languages _wesan _provided to missing past tense for_ seon_.

_Beon _means to _become, to grow, to come into being_ and become something like a future tense of _seon_ subsequently replacing individual forms of the merged verb _seon-wesan_. In English _beon_ eventually supplanted forms of _seon _in infinitive, present subjunctive, imperative, present participle and provided the hitherto missing past participle while in German only the 1st & 2nd singular present indicative (_ich bin, du bist_) survived.


----------



## Gale_

It's very interesting indeed! 


berndf said:


> ... while in German only the 1st & 2nd singular present indicative (_ich bin, du bist_) survived.


 Are French "*suis*"/"*sont*"/"*sommes*" cognate with "_seon_" or maybe "_sindon_"? And what about Latin "_sum_"?
  In Old Slavic the verb "byti" ("to be") was used in the present like English "am"/"are" /"is", but now in Russian it isn't, although rarely, if we want to accent, we say "я *есть* такой-то" instead of "я такой-то". In Old Russian it was "аз *есмь* ..." (*jes*-*m**ǐ*).
  But still the verb "быть" ("byti") is used in the future tense, subjunctive (here as a particle), passive... 
  I don't know much about Sanskrit and German or Roman languages, but I've noticed that it seems to sound like English "be" and German "bin" as well as its present form "есть" resembles Latin "esse"/"est", Italian "essere" and French "être"/"es"/"est".


----------



## berndf

Gale_ said:


> Are French "*suis*"/"*sont*"/"*sommes*" cognate with "_seon_" or maybe "_sindon_"? And what about Latin "_sum_"?


See #9 above.


----------



## Gale_

I saw your last post: 


berndf said:


> See #9 above.


And I saw  #9, but I'm not sure I see what you hint at


----------



## berndf

Gale_ said:


> I saw your last post: And I saw  #9, but I'm not sure I see what you hint at


It implies that Latin _sum _is indeed cognate to PGerm. _immi_ as you surmised.


----------



## Gale_

i.e. I saw that you told about "the athematic conjugations _-mi, -si, -ti_", but it's not clear enough.


----------



## Gale_

berndf said:


> It implies that Latin _sum _is indeed cognate to PGerm. _immi_ as you surmised.


Oh, I get it )


----------

