(no subject)

[kasak.livejournal.com]

I realize that the verb быть has lost its present tense in modern Russian (save for есть, but that's different), but I'm a bit curious. Does anyone here actually know the old conjugations for быть in the present tense?

я --?
ты --?
он/она/оно есть
мы --?
вы --?
они --?

I realize that they have no place in the language today, but that doesn't stop me from just wondering. If anyone could fill me in, it'd be appreciated.

Comments

[moon-aka-sun.livejournal.com]

Я есмь, ты еси, он есть, мы есьмы, вы есьте, они суть.
(Actually, 'я' should be 'аз' and other pronouns were probably different too, I'm not sure.)

[med99.livejournal.com]

no, they weren't different, except они had three gender forms (они, оне, она). Аз is Church Slavonic rather than Russian proper.

[squodge.livejournal.com]

They look quite close to Latin/Classical Greek:

sum / eimi
es / ei
est / esti
sumus / esmen
estis / este
sunt / eisi

~ squodge ~

[hockeyophile.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a big reason why we know which languages are in the Indo-European Family of Languages is due to their conjugation of "to be." Since saying things like "I am, you are, etc..." is among the most basic parts of a language, looking at that alone gives you a good idea whether a certain language is Indo-European or not (same goes for numbers 1-10, family words, etc.). So I'm not surprised that the Russian conjugation is so much like "to be" conjugations in both modern and more ancient Indo-European languages, since Russian itself has preserved many things from the ancestor language.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

They say that the language which stays the closest to the prehistoric Indo-European language is Lithuanian. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, used to say that he could understand Lithuanian because he studied Sanskrit. I served in the military in late 1980s, still in the Soviet Army, and I used to listen to how my Lithuanian company mates spoke between themselves. It definitely sounded somehow understandable (mostly through common roots,) though Lithuanian is not Slavic.

[olga-mukhortova.livejournal.com]

just for comparing
that is from modern Bulgarian:
аз съм
ти си
той е, тя е, то е
ние сме
вие сте
те са
:о)

[aveleen.livejournal.com]

Polish sounds closer to old Russian version :)

ja jestem
ty jestes
on/ona jest
my jestesmy
wy jestescie
oni sa

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Polish is grammatically closer to Russian and, especially, Belorussian and Ukrainian than Bulgarian or other Southern Slavic languages, though for many Russians it's easier to understand spoken Bulgarian, since phonetically it is a little closer to Russian that Polish is.

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

It's easier to understand Bulgarian because it's lexically closer to Russian - thanks to a lot of Church Slavonic (i.e. Old Bulgarian) borrowings in Russian.