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Comment by randomwalker | Hacker News Reader

Many languages get along just fine without that verb, such as my native language, Tamil. I learnt a tiny bit of Russian a long time ago, and -- someone correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't think Russian has it either. For instance, "what is your name?" is "kak vas zovut?" Also, Mandarin has shi which can be used in some senses of "to be" llsted in the article but not others; for instance, identity but not predication.

So I dug a little deeper and found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_copula

"A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be."

I'm a bit of a language nerd, so this is very interesting.

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Russian doesn't have an expressed copula verb in the typical present indicative sentence that simply links a subject and a predicate. So the way I used to say "I'm an American" would be expressed in Russian (which also lacks indefinite articles) as if I said, "I American." But Russian does have a verb 'to be' and makes moderately heavy use of it in other tenses and moods.

> Many languages get along just fine without that verb, such as my native language, Tamil.

Ummm... in Tamil, "Movie was good" == "Padam nandraga irundhadhu". Irundhadhu is "was". AFAIK that is how people say it. It would be weird without "was".

While Turkish does have a form of "to be", it's not used the way you would expect. Many sentences that would otherwise use some conjugated form of "to be" in Turkish will simply do without a verb.

For example, introducing yourself you'd say "I'm Joe". In Turkish, this is "Benim Joe", where "Benim" is the first person singular pronoun with the first person possessive suffix. Many other sentences have no verb, which can make learning Turkish difficult.

I actually found learning Turkish quite pleasing. But perhaps I just love to learn strange (for me) things.

Actually, the Mandarin shi can also used for predication with the "noun shi adjective de" grammar pattern. For instance, you could say "ta shi hen gao de," for "he is very tall." This is grammatically correct, but then the sentence has a tone that is like passive voice in English. Thus, in most simple cases, like the above example, you would opt for the terser "ta hen gao" instead.

"For instance, you could say "ta shi hen gao de," for "he is very tall." This is grammatically correct, but then the sentence has a tone that is like passive voice in English."

I would interpret such a Mandarin sentence to come from a discourse context in which the person's height has already become a topic, as for example when the speaker is conceding to another speaker that the person is tall (but perhaps unskilled in basketball, nonetheless).

The normal way of expressing "he is tall," "the language learner is smart," etc., is to use what linguists often call "stative verbs" (English-speaking learners often call them "adjectives") without any use of "是 [be]."

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