Re: hebrew and "to be"

Tony B. Csoka (csoka@itsa.ucsf.edu)
Sun, 11 May 1997 15:41:17 -0700


There are similar grammatical structures in Hungarian when using the verb
"to be", though the two languages have little else in common.

Tony B. Csoka

>Since no one else has said it:
>
>It is true that in Hebrew, the verb "to be" is dropped in lots of
>circumstances. You say the equivalent of "I Perry" (or should that be
>"Me Tarzan"), not "I am Perry". However, this is of no more
>significance than the practice in English of dropping the second
>person pronoun in imperitives ("Go to the store!") -- the verb is
>implied, just as the second person pronoun is implied. The listeners
>"hears it" even if it isn't there, as it were.
>
>I don't know of any examples of a language that truly lacks "to be",
>though I'm not a linguist.
>
>Perry