It has come to my attention that a number of schools, when assigning essays for their students to write, do not allow usage of the word "is".
I had always been vaguely aware that there were schools that wanted their students to use more "creative" vocabulary, but it really hit home for me some months ago when my 8th-grader sister was trying to write essays without using the word "is". When I asked her why she couldn't use that word, she explained that it was because her teacher had told her not to, with the reason being something to the effect that it wasn't good or smart enough.
Then, somewhat more recently, I had a conversation with my 9th-grader cousin who reported the same problem. Her teachers didn't want her to use "is", either, citing reasons pretty similar to those of my sister's teacher. At least her teachers had been kind enough to tell their students what words they could use - "remains" was a popular one. But even that was inadequate, we both decided. A lot of the time, things are, and they don't remain because they didn't change, nor was there any ability and/or likelihood of them changing.
Take the sentence "God is love", for example - a popular phrase amongst Christians such as my cousin and her teachers (she attends a Christian school). I know some readers might not agree with that statement due to particular religious beliefs or lack thereof, but let's for a moment assume this statement is true. My cousin and I believe it, anyway, and that's the sentence she brought up for the purpose of example.
"You'd have to say 'God remains love'," she said. "Doesn't that sound awkward?"
It certainly did sound awkward. Awkward and inaccurate, for the belief that God is love also involves the belief that God can't not be love and that God has always been love. To say that God "remains" love is not only clunky, it carries with it the implication that, at one point, God was not love, which is almost certainly not what anyone saying "God is love" wants to imply.
I tried for a bit to find a sentence that meant the same thing but didn't carry any troublesome implications - just some way to convey, in a sentence, the idea that God, being the root of love, was love Himself. But it just didn't work. I made up things like "Love comes from God", "God is equivalent to love", "God and love are the same", but they either didn't convey the exact message (as in the case of the first attempt) or contained some derivative of the word "is", which was also disallowed (as in the cases of the next two attempts).
Perhaps religious equivalency statements aren't quite your thing, though. That's fine. Let's say that I'm telling you, "I am human", which contains a derivative of "is". Alright, there are some people who have contested that point as well, but let's again assume that I am indeed human. This statement doesn't carry with it nearly as many strong connotations as the Christian belief "God is love", but if I can't use a simple two-letter verb to show equivalency and state of being, how else am I going to tell you that I am human and not, say, a robot or a Hobbit or a semi-sentient piece of cheese? I've spent a good ten minutes trying to think up similar sentences, and everything I've come up includes the word "is" or one of its derivatives.
Teachers and other such people say they don't want us to use the word "is" because it's not as "strong" a choice as other words, but if you think about it, "is" is potentially the strongest word in the English language. It equates things. What's another word that you can use to equate things with each other, dictate things' very nature, and confirm something's existence, either as something in particular or just the fact thereof? I don't know one, either.
Now, it is true that the word "is" can be unnecessary - sentences like "The ball was thrown by him" could be re-worded into "He threw the ball", which avoids passive speech and, according to my sister, is the reason her teacher puts a universal ban on "is" and its derivatives). It's true that you can often use more interesting or more accurate word choice - I could say "That film is boring" or "That film bores me", and while both are acceptable, I find the second one slightly more interesting.) It's true that it's common - who knows how many times I've used it in this blog entry alone?
But maybe it's common for a reason, and maybe the reason isn't because people are lazy but because it's necessary to use that powerful little two-letter verb.
