Talk:is

Unclear definition

What does English def #2 mean: does, has, should?? — Hippietrail 10:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Maybe [s]he is trying to indicate its use as an auxiliary verb as well as a copula? —Muke Tever 12:35, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I thought of that but as it is it's certainly not clear. If you're thinking of the use in making passive verbs, I'm having trouble thinking of ways it's actually used in the present tense. If you're thinking of the way it's used in continuous tenses with the present participle, then it definitely needs to be re-written anyway. And shouldn't such defs exist primarily under "to be"? Are there other ways in which "to be" is used as an auxiliary? — 138.130.33.197 01:38, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That isn't right, is it ?

you guys is too smart fer me.clinton kellerman-2008 — This unsigned comment was added by Clinton.kellerman (talk • contribs) at 02:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC).

Etymology surprises me

I'm surprised that is does not derive from the Latin esse or, more closely, the Spanish es. Is it a cognate? 68.173.113.106 01:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Right, English is a Germanic language, and the common verb forms such as is are Germanic. It is cognate with Spanish es, French est, Russian есть (jestʹ), Greek ἐστί (estí), Albanian është, Persian است (æst). —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:05, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

You know what We is

Should this "we is" non-standard use also be added as such? --Backinstadiums (talk) 13:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Another example would be Coolio - Gansta's Paradise: "The way things is goin' I don't know".Jiiimbooh (talk) 05:07, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Alternative form: ees

However the entry of ees shows the /iːz/; isn't then this a synonym rather than an "alternative form"? --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:54, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Twas there tomorrow is a week

See Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/May#Monday_was_a_week.. - -sche (discuss) 19:33, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

them's

use in them's --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:14, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Dropping 'is' in online usage

In online usage, the dropping of 'is' (or equivalent) is used to make a statement sound cliche or childish (think 'orange man bad'). Should this be noted here? – Nixinova [‌T|C] 03:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Maybe this usage note belongs on be and not is, although this form of zero copula is probably used most commonly for third person singular constructions, so I could see a case for putting it here too. Someone should probably edit w:Zero copula#In English and w:Copula (linguistics)#Zero copula too. I would not be surprised if this derives from AAVE which also drops the copula frequently as noted at w:African-American_Vernacular_English#Other_grammatical_characteristics. 70.175.192.217 03:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

RFC discussion: December 2022

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

is / FanNihongo's erroneous pronunciations

For some time, we had listed the pronunciation as: (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪs/, (UK, US, Canada, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ɪz/. The weird "GenAm" pronunciation was removed in diff, leaving only the normal "US" pronunciation, but then FanNihongo added /is/ as a standard US/UK/etc pronunciation, which is wrong. Actually, I now see FanNihongo added the earlier, also-wrong GenAm pronunciation, and has added other wrong /-s/ pronunciations, so instead of posting "really? is /is/ right?" in the Tea Room, I'm posting "we probably need to check this user's other edits for more errors" here. (Spotted this while looking for a different error, people adding plurals and third-person forms in /-s/ that should be /-z/.) - -sche (discuss) 03:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

See User talk:Mahagaja#About the word please for a similar case. FanNihongo is a native Spanish speaker and has difficulty both hearing the difference between word-final /s/ and /z/ in English and believing native English speakers when we assure him that such a difference exists. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:25, 1 December 2022 (UTC)