yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Helping verbs | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Hello, Garans.

Now, we've already talked about how verbs can show actions and link concepts, and today I'd like to talk about a third function of the verb, which is helping other verbs. Now, we call this the helping verb. You may have heard it called that, or the auxiliary verb, and these are just two words for the same thing. Auxiliary is just a more Latin way to say helping; that's all it means.

Now, I've brought along an image of my friend Brian to help explain this principle. What helping verbs are is really just inflected forms of the verbs "to have" and "to be." As we get deeper into the verb, I'll explain what each one means in each one of its different versions. But for now, suffice it to say that I'm just going to throw out some examples just so you can see what it means for a helping verb to be a helping verb.

The specific way in which helping verbs help is that they establish certain facts about a sentence, usually when they're happening in time. We'll get more and more into that as we get more into tenses and aspect, but I just want to give you some examples.

So here we have Brian is eating a pizza. Brian and I love pizza; we used to eat a lot of pizza. Brian has eaten a pizza. Brian was eating a pizza. And finally, Brian had been eating a pizza.

So the presence of all these helping verbs has different effects depending on which ones you use. As I said, we'll get into those later, but just for a brief overview, for example, um, let's see. Brian is eating a pizza; that suggests that it's going on now. Brian has eaten a pizza; that means he had done it; it's over in the past. Brian was eating a pizza, which means he was in the middle of eating a pizza when something happened. And finally, Brian had been eating a pizza, so he was doing it, and then he stopped at some point in time.

This is just the most basic introduction to helping verbs. So, verbs can show actions, verbs can link concepts, and verbs can help other verbs. You can learn anything!

David out.

More Articles

View All
What's in Bill Gates' $47 Billion Stock Portfolio?
Bill Gates, the internet sensation. You might know him as the guy that jumped over a chair or the guy that has no idea what the price of groceries are. Or you might know him as the genius co-founder of Microsoft and the world’s seventh richest man, just b…
Peter Lynch: How to Outperform the Market
Trying to predict the market is really a waste. I don’t know what’s going to do; it can go down. When I ran Magellan, 13 years declined 10 or more nine times the market. Wow, I had a perfect record; I went down more than 10 every time where the market wen…
The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - Collatz Conjecture
This is the most dangerous problem in mathematics, one that young mathematicians are warned not to waste their time on. It’s a simple conjecture that not even the world’s best mathematicians have been able to solve. Paul Erdos, a famous mathematician, sai…
How to Calculate the Intrinsic Value of a Stock in 2023 (Full Example)
All right guys, today we are going to be tackling a very big topic that I’m sure a lot of you guys are very interested in, and that is how to value a stock. So, at the end of this video, you’ll understand the step-by-step process to find the intrinsic val…
Growth vs Value Investing. Which is Better?
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! In this video, we are going to be comparing two corners of the investing world: that is, growth investing versus value investing. We’re going to have a look at what each one is about, compare the two, and also look a…
Homeroom with Sal & Fareed Zakaria
Hi everyone! Welcome to the daily homeroom livestream. Very excited about the conversation we’re about to have. I will start with my standard announcement to remind everyone that we are a not-for-profit organization and we can only exist with support from…