English 路 Chapter 1 路 Lesson 7 路 Grammar primer

To be: am, is and are

I am, you are, she is. The most common verb in English, with not and with questions: Are you okay? Yes, I am.

The short version

English needs a verb: I am happy, not I happy

Many languages can say he teacher or I happy with no verb. English cannot. Every sentence needs a verb, and for names, age, jobs, feelings and places that verb is be: am, is or are.

She's a teacher. I'm happy.

Not She teacher or I happy. Note the a before the job, too.

Your age uses be, not have

In English you are an age; you do not have it. Say I'm twenty, or I'm twenty years old. I have twenty years sounds wrong to every native speaker.

I'm twenty.

Not I have twenty years.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Lesson 7 of 35 in this chapter

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