English Grammar: AUXILIARY VERBS – be, do, have

My name's Ronnie and I'm going to teach you some grammar.

It's kind of a... difficult grammar, but once you learn this overview of-dunh, dunh, dunh,

dunh-"Auxiliary Verbs", English grammar is going to become easier for you, I hope.

So, if you're just beginning to learn English grammar, oh, stay in there, you can do it.

Yuri, this goes out to you in Salvador, Brazil.

Let's keep going, man.

We have three auxiliary verbs that we use in English: "be", "do", and "have".

But the thing about the auxiliary verbs is that each auxiliary verb will tell us what

kind of grammar we're going to use with it.

So, let's look at the first one: "be".

So, "be" in its form in the present tense is "am", "is", "are"; negative: "am not",

"isn't", and "aren't".

These are present.

The past tense would be present...

Or, no.

The past tense in the positive is "was" and "were"; negative: "wasn't" and "weren't".

So, how do we actually use this auxiliary verb?

And the answer is: We use it in two forms of English grammar.

The first one is progressive.

So, if you have a progressive sentence, we have present progressive, past progressive,

and future progressive.

Every time we have a sentence in English with progressive, we know we're going to use the

verb "to be".

So, if our sentence is present progressive, we're going to use the present tense of the

verb "to be", "is am are" with a verb with "ing".

So, in English grammar, anything that's progressive or continuous is another word for the same

grammar, it's always going to be an "ing" on the verb.

The thing that changes and tells us the grammar is the verb "to be".

Present is: "is", "am", "are", plus verb "ing", but the past, we're going to use the past

tense: "was" and "were" plus verb "ing".

So, progressive will always have a verb "ing".

The thing that changes the tense of it is the verb "to be".

We have future progressive or future continuous.

In this one we're simply going to use the verb "will", so in this one we have "will

be" plus verb "ing".

For example: "I will be eating pizza."

This tells us what's going to happen in the future.

"I was eating pizza" was the past, and "I am eating pizza", something's happening now,

that's present progressive.

So, the progressive will always have the verb "to be", either past, present, or future,

and it will always have an "ing" on the verb.

Okay, cool.

Let's get more complicated, okay?

We have another structure in English grammar called passive.

Now, passive voice basically you're taking the action from the person or the focus on

the person, and we're putting it towards the activity.

So, in a normal English sentence we would say: "I eat lunch", but in a passive sentence,

we're taking away the subject and we're focusing on the action.

So, with the passive voice we have future passive, present passive, and past passive.

It goes along the same idea, is that the verb "to be" is going to tell us: Is it present?

Or if it's past.

When we use a passive sentence, we can only ever use the past participle of the verb,

or the third step of the verb.

So, passive will always be the verb "to be" plus the past participle.

If it's present, it's: "is", "am", "are", plus PP, past participle.

If it's past, it's "was" and "were" plus past participle.

It's hard to say the past participle, so I'm going to say PP.

I have to go PP.

So, as an example, we say: "Lunch is eaten", present tense.

"Lunch was eaten".

I'm going to step away and let you check that out.

Let your brain absorb it.

Make some sentences using this and the verb "to be".

If we used the future passive, I could say: "Lunch will be eaten", so again, when we're

using the future, we use "will be", but we're going to use the past participle.

Have you made some sentences?

Do it now.

Come on.

Make some sentences.

Go.

Okay.

So we've done the verb "to be".

And hopefully it's beginning to make sense, because English grammar rarely makes sense.

I'm going to make it make it make sense for you.

So, the next one is the auxiliary verb "do".

Now, this one's interesting because we only use it in the negative form in the simple

present, or we use it in the negative simple past.

So we don't have to worry about the positive, but we do use it for the negative in the simple

present and the negative in the past, and for questions.

So, let's check out first the simple present, or present simple.

We only use this auxiliary verb for the negative and the question form.

So, in the negative we're going to use subject, plus "don't" or "doesn't", plus the base verb.

Now, this is where English gets tricky and you have to remember that if it is "I", "you",

"we" and "they", we use "don't".

But if it's "he", "she", or "it", we have to use "doesn't".

So this is...

You always have to be careful with your subject and your verb agreement.

They have to agree.

So, as an example: "I don't like pizza."

If I used "he", I would say: "He doesn't like pizza."

And we have to be careful and use the base verb.

Okay?

The question would be: "Does he like pizza?"

Ar?

Like a dog.

If it's a question form, we put the auxiliary verb first: "do", "doesn't", subject, plus

the base verb.

Not the base verb, the base verb.

We also use this in the past simple, again, only with negative and only with a question.

So, the way that we change "did"...

Sorry, "does" into the negative is "didn't" in the past, but this is where we always make

a mistake.

I've told you English grammar is crazy, I'm not joking.

When we use "didn't", we always have to use the base verb.

So, this is where we get confused, because we think: "Ronnie, this is past tense."

So, if it's past tense, we have to use the past of the verb-mm-mm-because our auxiliary

verb "didn't" makes the sentence past.

So, if it's an auxiliary verb it's going to tell us if it's past or present, and we have

to use the base verb.

So, we have to say: "He didn't go home."

You cannot say: "He didn't went home."

That's grammatically wrong.

This verb tells us it's past, and this verb tells us it's present.

Oh, that's kind of cool when you learn it.

If you're doing the question form, it's very similar to this, past tense: "Did", subject,

plus your base.

Again, you always have to be careful.

Even though it is past, we actually have to use the base verb because the "did" or the

auxiliary verb tells us: "Hey, this is a past tense, not a present tense.

Please use the base verb."

So: "Did", "didn't".

Ah.

"Didn't" in the negative and "did" in the question.

Another tip when you are speaking English and you're asking someone a question, always

ask them a positive question.

It's more difficult for the listener, and for the speaker, and for everyone involved

if you use a negative question.

So, just for now, you're just learning this, always ask a positive question.

"Did I go home?", "Didn't I go home?"

The negative question is always much more confusing, and we need to make English grammar

simpler.

Ah.

We're almost done here.

I'm going to step away and let your absorb this.

Please make one, two, three, four sentences using the auxiliary verb "do".

And we're back with the last one, the last one, the most exciting one maybe ever.

Yeah.

This is the most exciting one.

We are going to use "have has", negative "haven't", and "hasn't", and then we have the past: "had"

and "hadn't".

So, when we use the verb as an auxiliary "have", we use it for perfect tenses in English.

They're so perfect.

So, when we use the perfect tense, our verb is always going to be the past participle,

just like in the passive.

So the passive and the perfects in English, we always use the past participle.

And again, we can have the future perfect, we can have present perfect, and we can have

past perfect.

So, the way we form the future perfect is we're going to use subject with "will", so

future we use "will" all the time, "have", and then the past participle.

Okay?

Or we can also use "has".

So, the future we use "will" plus "have", plus the past participle or the PP.

If we're using present perfect, we're going to use the subject: "have" or "has", plus

the past participle.

So, if you can think about this: "have" in the present tense is "have" and "has", so

in the past tense we're going to use "had" plus the past participle.

So, if we're using past perfect, we're using "had", plus PP.

If we're talking about present perfect, we're using "has" plus PP.

People get confused and a lot of people think that the present perfect is the present tense,

but it's not.

The present perfect talks about the past.

The thing that makes the verb present or past is our wonderful auxiliary verb: "have".

If the verb "have" is present perfect, we use the present tense of the verb.

If we use the past tense, if we use past perfect, we're going to use the past tense of "have".

So: "I haven't eaten lunch.

Oh, I'm hungry."

Future: "I will have played seven games", so we're using "will", "have", plus the past

participle.

If we use present perfect, we use: "he", "she", "it has eaten", "you already have eaten".

You have to be careful again on your subject and your verb agreement.

There're so many things to remember.

And then the past participle...

Or, sorry, the past perfect, all we're doing is changing "has" or "have" to "had".

And this one's cool, because we don't have to worry about "he", "she", and "it"; they

all use "had".

Thank you for being easy, past perfect.

If you have questions about these specific grammar points, if you don't know what these

grammar points are, if you want to know more detail about them, you know the website: www.engvid.com,

you can search in the search area and you can find exactly the grammar points and how

we use them.

But the thing that I need you to understand is the auxiliary verbs are going to help you

understand grammar easier I hope.

If you have questions, throw it to me in the comment box and I can help you.

Until next time, I'm out of here.