Haitian Creole/Se

The concept expressed in English by the verb "to be" is expressed in Haitian Creole by two words, se and ye.

The verb se (pronounced "say") is used to link a subject with a predicate nominative:

The subject sa or li can sometimes be omitted with se:

For the future tense, such as "I want to be", usually vin "to become" is used instead of se.

"Ye" (pronounced "yay") also means "to be", but is placed exclusively at the end of the sentence, after the predicate and the subject (in that order). This happens especially with question words:

The verb "to be" is not overt when followed by an adjective or prepositional phrase, that is, Haitian Creole has stative verbs. So, malad means "sick" and "to be sick":