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That was a surprisingly entertaining and well-researched manifesto. In the same spirit, I think it is time to rethink the verb 'to be': the only consistent con

That was a surprisingly entertaining and well-researched manifesto. In the same spirit, I think it is time to rethink the verb 'to be': the only consistent conjugation is obviously 'I/you are; he ares; we/you/they are'. And similarly the past tense should be 'ared' instead of 'was/were'. Generations of children have been getting themselves needlessly confused because of this terrible convention! Would it be possible to correct this wrong? Or do you think the time for doing so has passed and, by now, it are what it are.

wruza 5y ago
But why “are” and not “be” (past. bed)? Also, pi was not strictly pi by Euler, who used pi for both 3.14... and 6.28... in different papers. Edit: did you know you can do without “be” at all? It purely synthetic.
- someguyorother 5y ago
  >Edit: did you know you can do without “be” at all? It purely synthetic. Wouldn't it become rather difficult to do identity statements without "is"? E.g. "The Tor network is an anonymous relay network overlaid on the internet". You could perhaps say "The Tor network works on top of the internet and performs anonymous routing", but that's not quite the same thing as saying the anonymous routing is Tor's reason for existence (as opposed to just something it happens to be doing). The E-Prime guys want the is-of-identity to be hard (if not impossible). But it's not obvious that everybody would agree with their sentiment.
  - nathell 5y ago
    > Wouldn't it become rather difficult to do identity statements without "is"? Not really, depending on the language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    > "The Tor network is an anonymous relay network overlaid on the internet". Nitpick: This isn't an identity statement by the way: You can't replace "is" with "equals" here because it's being used to classify. It denotes subset, not equality or equivalence.
azornathogron 5y ago
I don't like "are" for that purpose. "Is" is phonetically clearer and less awkward. I is, you is, he/she/it is, they is. I'll admit the past tense "ised" (pronounced izz-d) is still not very nice. Perhaps it should be "be"... I be, you be, yesterday they beed.
rich_sasha 5y ago
> Generations of children have been getting themselves needlessly confused because of this terrible convention! Childs perhaps then?
- carlob 5y ago
  Generations of childs have ared geting themselfs
- galkk 5y ago
  Childs and mouses are very common words for non native speakers
- prof-dr-ir 5y ago
  On the contrary! The manifesto suggests one specific improvement to mathematical notation whilst ignoring all the other issues, for example that Euler's Gamma(n) equals (n-1)! instead of n! or that df/dx is not a fraction. So in that spirit I think it might be better to only propose fixing the verb 'to be' and to leave the poor children out of this discussion.
bsder 5y ago
The problem with "to be" is that we have multiple conflated meanings. "Thingy is blue". (nominative connection) "Thingy is presenting". (helper verb) "Thingy is." (existence) Other languages separate them and so can have more logical agreement.
dTal 5y ago
I think there's a bit of a difference between a woolly grammar you pick up organically at age 1-2, and a precisely specified system of abstract reasoning, specifically constructed as a tool of mind, that has to be hammered into you over the course of a decade.

wruza 5y ago

But why “are” and not “be” (past. bed)? Also, pi was not strictly pi by Euler, who used pi for both 3.14... and 6.28... in different papers. Edit: did you know you can do without “be” at all? It purely synthetic.

someguyorother 5y ago
>Edit: did you know you can do without “be” at all? It purely synthetic. Wouldn't it become rather difficult to do identity statements without "is"? E.g. "The Tor network is an anonymous relay network overlaid on the internet". You could perhaps say "The Tor network works on top of the internet and performs anonymous routing", but that's not quite the same thing as saying the anonymous routing is Tor's reason for existence (as opposed to just something it happens to be doing). The E-Prime guys want the is-of-identity to be hard (if not impossible). But it's not obvious that everybody would agree with their sentiment.
- nathell 5y ago
  > Wouldn't it become rather difficult to do identity statements without "is"? Not really, depending on the language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula
- guerrilla 5y ago
  > "The Tor network is an anonymous relay network overlaid on the internet". Nitpick: This isn't an identity statement by the way: You can't replace "is" with "equals" here because it's being used to classify. It denotes subset, not equality or equivalence.

azornathogron 5y ago

I don't like "are" for that purpose. "Is" is phonetically clearer and less awkward. I is, you is, he/she/it is, they is. I'll admit the past tense "ised" (pronounced izz-d) is still not very nice. Perhaps it should be "be"... I be, you be, yesterday they beed.

rich_sasha 5y ago

> Generations of children have been getting themselves needlessly confused because of this terrible convention! Childs perhaps then?

carlob 5y ago
Generations of childs have ared geting themselfs
galkk 5y ago
Childs and mouses are very common words for non native speakers
prof-dr-ir 5y ago
On the contrary! The manifesto suggests one specific improvement to mathematical notation whilst ignoring all the other issues, for example that Euler's Gamma(n) equals (n-1)! instead of n! or that df/dx is not a fraction. So in that spirit I think it might be better to only propose fixing the verb 'to be' and to leave the poor children out of this discussion.

bsder 5y ago

The problem with "to be" is that we have multiple conflated meanings. "Thingy is blue". (nominative connection) "Thingy is presenting". (helper verb) "Thingy is." (existence) Other languages separate them and so can have more logical agreement.

dTal 5y ago

I think there's a bit of a difference between a woolly grammar you pick up organically at age 1-2, and a precisely specified system of abstract reasoning, specifically constructed as a tool of mind, that has to be hammered into you over the course of a decade.