“I Am Who Am”…Yahweh, Jehovah…The most sacred words in Judaism: so much so that the words are not even spoken aloud, lest taking the Lord’s name in vain (amongst Orthodox Jews).
Yet “I Am” is the first, most common language lesson to those leaning a foreign language…verb conjugation:
I Am…You Are…He/She/It Is.
Is there a a language connection?
I’m not 100% certain of what you’re asking.
The four-letter holy name, YHVH, is a form of the verb “to be”, but not one that conjugates. It’s a noun that’s meant as a contraction of “Is, was and alwayd will be.”
The term used in Exodus 3:14, commonly translated “I am that I am” is more properly translated “I will be that which I will be,” three words which twice use the common verb form of “I will be.” There is no particular taboo on the use of this word, it is not considered holy,
Ah.
Not in Hebrew, which has no present tense version of “to be” anyway. You can say “I will be” or “I was”, but you can’t actually say “I am” or “he is” or “we are”. If you wanted to say, for example, “I’m happy”, the literally translation would be “I happy”. (Although, like I said, you could say “I was happy yesterday”).
Kyla:
Yes there is. “To be” is “L’Hyos”. “I am” (as in “I exist”, though you are correct that it is not needed as a helping verb, as English would require) is “Ani hoveh”.
I don’t know but God uses all of creation to try to talk to us, so it is not out of the question.
Are we talking like, Biblical Hebrew? I will happily admit that I’ve never even studied proper Biblical Hebrew - and that my Modern Hebrew is beyond rusty from disuse - but I’m pretty sure no one ever uses “ani hoveh” in regular speech.