I've been contemplating the importance of such abstract verbs as "to be" lately, and
can't imagine how early humans came up with the concept. Nouns are easy, since
onomatopoeia can explain most animate, and some inanimate ideas, but how did
abstract verbs develop?

What is this, Asa? Where are you?
[What is this? Where are you?]

My point is that these are the sort of concepts which, it seems to me, a language would need very early in its development.

Hebrew, and I suspect in some other languages, does not use any verb to indicate the "is" concept of "identity"; they simply set the two object together. For example, in Hebrew "What is this?" would be "Mah ze?" (mah= what; ze=this). The response would be either "Ze sefer" or "Ze ha-sefer" (sefer=book; ha-=the), meaning, "This is a book," or "This is the book."

I believe, but am far from sure, that Japanese and Russion also omit any ""to be" verb in these situations.

quote:

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I believe, but am far from sure, that Japanese and Russion also omit any ""to be" verb in these situations.

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I actually took a few sememsters of Japanese back when it looked like they were set to take over the world financially.

If I'm recalling this correctly, sentence construction involves naming a topic, and then talking about it.

One simple sentence that I remember:

Atashi wa, amerikajin desu.

It means "I'm American" or "I'm an American person".

But technically, I believe 'atashi wa' translates as "As for me"--i.e. the topic.

Amerika--I think we can all figure that out.

-jin is a suffix that means person.

And 'desu' is basically a 'to be/existence' verb.
(And prononounced--according to the professor from Yokohama that was my teacher--'Dess' not "DESS-oo".)

(I took another class from a guy from Hokkaido? (I think) and he had a very different pronunciation--I think the Yokohama dialect drops lots of vowel sounds.)

And one more piece of information that my brain just brought forth:

"Watashi" is "I"
"Atashi" is "I" if you're female--so I guess that the sentence was really "I'm an American female person."

Despite its beautiful overall simplicity, Spanish has two verbs, both meaning "To be."

Yes. And it's a confounded nuisance.

My mental model is to decide whether a "state" verb (such as to stand) can be used. If it can, then I use estar.

La Senorita esta aqui (the young lady is here - which could be rendered as ...stands here...)

If not, then I use ser.

La senorita es hermosa (the young lady is beautiful) Beauty does not last for ever but it is a semi-permanent condition, not a transitory state.

Richard English

Try Dutch

As well as "is", if you want to say "It's on the table," you've got to work out whether it is standing or lying on the table. And buildings lie on streets; they don't stand in them.