Question

What part of speech is the word ‘be’ and why?

Answer 1

Hint: This word ‘be’ is said to the most protean of the English language. It is called so in reference to the Greek God Proteus who had the capability of changing its form at any instance. Similarly, the word ‘be’ is known to constantly change form and that too without much of a discernable pattern.

Complete answer:
To understand the role of the word ‘be’ let us first analyze a sentence using ‘be’. For e.g. I will be ready tomorrow. From this given example we know, I – is a pronoun, will – is a helping verb indicating future tense, ready – is an adverb and ‘tomorrow’ can be used as an adverb or a noun. Here there is a helping verb and two adverbs, therefore there has to be the main verb, which these words are describing or modifying. Therefore, that specific verb is the word ‘BE’.
The ‘BE’ verb is the most irregular, and constantly changing verb in all of English. Let us understand its forms:

Present Tense	Past Tense	Participle
I am	I was	Present tense + Been (past participle)
You are	You were	Past tense + Being (present participle)
He / she is	He / she was
We are	We were
They are	They were

The ‘be’ verb can be used as the main verb, as explained in the example above. But the ‘be’ verb is also used as an auxiliary for the perfect tense or the continuous tense. Let us see some example for the same.
1) I am eating. I was eating. I will be eating. (all the three-sentence are in the continuous tense and ‘eating’ is the main verb and ‘be’ is the auxiliary verb)
2) I have been eating. I had been eating. I will have been eating. (here all the sentences are in the perfect continuous tense and again ‘be’ is the auxiliary verb).
Note: All the forms of the verb ‘be’ are used in all different kinds of sentences in the manner given in the table. It is the most number of variations one can find in any verb in the English language. However, there is still one more exception to its usage. When we use the ‘be’ verb in the subjunctive mood, we always use the word ‘were’ irrespective of the pronoun. For e.g., I wish I were you. I wish he/she were here. And similarly for all other pronouns.