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I just observed Arabic doesn't have present tense "to be" (i.e. am, is, are).

For example, look at this sentence:

اَنا مُعَلِّم (I am a teacher) where اَنا means I and مُعَلِّم means teacher. There isn't a word that means am here. (Ana Moallem)

But surprisingly, they have past tense "to be" (i.e. was and were).

For example:

کانَ جَوُّ بارِد (The air was cold) where کانَ means was, جَو means air, and بارِد means cold. (Kana Javvo Bared).

Even they have future tense "to be" (i.e. will be).

For example:

اَنا سَوفَ أکونُ مُعَلِّم (I will be a teacher) where سَوفَ أکونُ means I will be. (Ana sawfa akoono moallem).

Why don't they have present tense "to be" while they have past tense "to be" and future tense "to be"?

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    They do – it’s just frequently eschewed in favour of nominal sentences (see Wiktionary’s usage notes). It’s not actually all that uncommon for present/imperfective copulative verbs to be omitted, cross-linguistically – interestingly, another group of languages that habitually do this are the Goidelic (Irish, Scottish and Manx Gaelic), which share with Arabic the typologically somewhat unusual feature of being VSO.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 6 at 22:32
  • @JanusBahsJacquet So, in that example in your provided link does هُوَ which means he serve as is? Also, can we have a non-nominal sentnce in Arabic that has a present tense "to be"? (Not کانَ)
    – Snack Exchange
    Commented Nov 6 at 23:16
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    No, in the nominal sentence, there is no verb – there’s a subject and a predicate, but no verb; when I said, “they do”, I meant that non-past copulas do exist, not that there is a verb in the examples you gave. In the last example in the Wiktionary usage notes, for example, أَكُونَ ʔakūna ‘am’ is the verb, more specifically a non-past (imperfect) first person singular form of کانَ.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 7 at 0:29
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    In Russian and Ukrainian, forms of "to be" in present tense other than third-person singular form are archaic, and third-person singular form is also often omitted.
    – Arfrever
    Commented Nov 7 at 5:25
  • It does, for the first person it’s أکونُ for instance. But as already mentionned it’s never used, probably for the same reason you usually do not say اَنا before the verb for instance.
    – Mat
    Commented Nov 7 at 11:51

1 Answer 1

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Because it is not needed, it is dropped, and this dropping became so frequent that the present tense forms of "to be" were no longer transmitted to the next generation and forgotten. The phenomenon itself is not rare across the languages of the world (see the examples in the comments to the questions, I can throw in the Turkic languages for another one) and it is called zero copula.

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  • You say it is forgotton. So it was a thing in the past. How did Arabs use the present tense for to be in the past?
    – Snack Exchange
    Commented Nov 7 at 10:12
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    @SnackExchange it is like verb conjugations and noun cases in English - they existed, but has become long forgotten. Another example is the 2st person singular pronouns thou/thy/thine/thyself - which were in use not so long ago (compared to the Arabic present of to be.)
    – Roger V.
    Commented Nov 7 at 11:10
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    @SnackExchange check this for a Hebrew example. It is related to Arabic. It does not say what exactly happened in Arabic, but it is a related example. There is a potentially interesting paper about Proto Semitic at bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2023/12/01/…
    – Vladimir F Героям слава
    Commented Nov 7 at 14:55

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