| as-mi | I am. | ’-smas | we are. |
| a-si | thou art. | ’s-tha | ye are. |
| as-ti | he is. | ’s-anti | they are. |
By separating the root from the ending in this way we may the more easily detect the additions to the root, and their meanings. As is the root expressing the idea of being, existing; mi is from a root meaning I (preserved in me, Greek and Lat. me, mi, m[ich], etc.); so we get as-mi, am-I, or I am. Then we may trace this form of word through a number of languages connected with the Sanskrit. The most important part of as-mi, the consonants, are preserved in the Latin sum, I am, from which, by some further changes come the French suis, the Italian sono: the same word appears in our a-m, and in the Greek eimi (Doric esmi), I am. Next, coming to the second word, we see one of the s’s cut out, and we get a-si, in which the a is the root, and the si the addition signifying thou. To this addition correspond the final s’s in the Latin es, French es—tu es, and the Greek eis (Doric essi). So, again, in as-ti, the ti expresses he, and this corresponds to the Latin est, French est, the Greek esti, the German ist; in the English the expressive t has been lost. We will not continue the comparison of each word; it will be sufficient if we place side by side the same tense in Sanskrit and in Latin,[24] and give those who do not know Latin an opportunity of recognizing for themselves the tense in its changed form in French or Italian:—
| English. | Sanskrit. | Latin. |
| I am | as-mi | sum. |
| thou art | a-si | es. |
| he is | as-ti | est. |
| we are | ’s-mas | sumus. |
| ye are | ’s-tha | estis. |
| they are | ’s-anti | sunt. |
The plural of the added portion we see contains the letters m-s, and if we split these up again we get the separate roots mi and si, so that mas means most literally ‘I,’ and ‘thou,’ and hence ‘we.’ In the second person the Latin has preserved an older form than the Sanskrit, s-t the proper root-consonants for the addition part of the second person plural, combining the ideas thou and he, from which, ye. The third person plural cannot be so easily explained.
It will be seen that in the English almost all likeness to the Sanskrit terminations has been lost. Our verb ‘to be’ is very irregular, being, in fact, a mixture of several distinct verbs. The Anglo-Saxon had the verb beó contracted from beom (here we have at least the m- ending for I), I am, byst, thou art, bydh, he is, and the same appear in the German bin, bist. It is, of course, very difficult to trace the remains of the meaningless additions in such advanced languages as ours, or even in such as Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. Nevertheless, the reader may find it not uninteresting to trace in the Latin through most of the tenses of verbs these endings—m, for I, the first person; s, for thou, the second person; t, for he, the third person; m-s, for I and thou, we; st, for ye, thou and he, ye; nt, for they. And the same reader must be content to take on trust the fact that other additions corresponding to different tenses can also be shown or reasonably guessed to have been words expressive by themselves of the idea which belongs to the particular tense; so that where we have such a tense as—
| amabam | I was loving, |
| amabas | thou wast loving, |
| amabat, etc. | he was loving, |
we may recognize the meaning of the component parts thus:—
| ama-ba-m | love-was-I. |
| ama-ba-s | love-was-thou. |
| ama-ba-t | love-was-he. |