Re: "to be" and not to be in the world's languages

On 28/03/06, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
>
> Philip Newton girs'epset':
>
>
> | On 3/22/06, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
> | > Slavic languages typically don't have "to be" in the present tense.
> |
> | Is this really typical?
> |
> | I know that Russian doesn't have "to be" in the present tense, but
> | Polish and Czech do. I'm fairly sure Bulgarian and Serbian do as well.
> |
> | Maybe Russian is the odd one out and the "typical" behaviour for
> | Slavic languages *is* to have a present-tense "to be"?
>
> East Slavic langs (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) are odd. They tend to
> avoid using the verb "to be" in the present tense. But nevertheless, the
> very verb does exist even in the present tense form, and may be used for
> emphasis, for poetic purposes etc.


Oh? Pray, elaborate!  What's the Russian present
tense to be? I thought there was just "jest'" (which,
with the soft sign looks like an infinitive rather than
the 3rd singular I thought it was).

I'm curious about the Ukrainian one, too :)

For comparison, in Polish we have:

(ja) jestem    1s
(ty) jestes'   2s
(on) jest   3s
(my) jestes'my    1p
(wy) jestes'cie   2p
(oni) sa,       3p

(Can't type Polish letters here: s' = s-acute /s\/,
a, = a-hook /O~/)

s.

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