Why do some language learners often omit the verb “BE”?

Question

Many language learners miss out the verb BE when they are speaking English. This happens even if they know how the verb BE agrees with the Subject. They very rarely do this with other verbs.

Some examples:

• "Yesterday I very happy because my sister came to London to see me."
• "London very large city."
• "It doesn't matter what I do, they never nice to me."

There may be many other completely different and unrelated sentences where learners may omit the verb BE too. This question isn't meant to only be about these examples.

Why do so many language learners do this?

Answer 1

In many languages, the verb to be is not required: it may be optional, used only for emphatic affirmation, or even prohibited. The phenomenon is known as zero copula. English language learners may carry this habit into English, even when it's not grammatically allowed in most circumstances.

One special case in English is the fixed expression "Long time no see", which has its origins in pidgin English, possibly as a calque from Chinese. You have to admit, it's a much more efficient expression than "It has been a long time since we've seen each other". For English learners, the desire to keep expressions short and simple may be a factor in dropping words that they find superfluous, such as the verb to be.

Answer 2

In Italian sometimes the verb is left out and can be deduced from the context, as in the so-called nominal sentences:

• [Essendo] uscito da lavoro, si recò a casa. [~ [having been] off from work, he went home.]
• [Essendo stato] ferito, morì pochi giorni dopo. [~"[having been] wounded, he died a few days later.]

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Another interesting case is when the subject of the sentence is omitted. This can be easily understood for native Italian speakers (and many others!) since their (my) original language has a peculiar conjugation for each verb for every person and every tense, so from the verb (which cannot be omitted) the subject can be deduced:

Scrivo [first singular person]

Scrivi [second singular person]

...

Scrivete [second plural person]

=

Io scrivo,

Tu scrivi,

...

Voi scrivete,

but in English the equivalent forms (without subject, which is not correct) would all be "write": is it me who's writing? Is it you? etc.. Even worse:

Scrivevo [first singular person]

=

Io scrivevo,

which would be, literally, "wrote": who wrote?!