The Verb Be: I Am, You Are

This is related to my previous post, "I'm Walking."

We were lucky enough to get tickets to watch the local production of the musical "Avenue Q" last night. It was good my friend got us tickets way before last night as it was a fantastic show. While watching, though, I heard something that I could blog about.

One of the characters in "Avenue Q" is an Asian-American who speaks with stereotypical bad Asian English. She said "I feeling" and "You feeling." I remembered my earlier post and realized that the omission of the verb be is so prevalent, it requires another post (and maybe even more).

The ordinary form of the verb be includes am and are. If you're speaking in the present tense (like, right now!), you say "I am here!" or "You are there! There are some cases when we omit the verb (more of that in subsequent posts) but never for these two statements. Also, if we are speaking in the present continuous (the action started in the present and is continuing in the present), we use the verb. So, it's "I am feeling" and "You are feeling." In both cases, the feeling began right now and it's continuing. As I'm typing this, I can see that my cat is eating the papaya for my breakfast (I'm not joking)!

Get that cat!