I am not even a little bit of a linguist, and am furthermore functionaly monolingual though I know a little bit of a lot of languages. So maybe this is my fundamental Anglo/Latin-centrism speaking here. But it seems to me that one possible way of understanding the absence of an explicit verb "to be" in a language is that in those languages it is considered *so* key, *so* essential, that it doesn't even need to be spoken. The verb equivalent of breathing *air*, of being married *to one's spouse*, of "you" being the person I'm talking to, of putting "until it's safe, and then go" on a STOP sign - all things that could be expressed in words in English but that we very rarely bother to do because they would seem redundant to us. Maybe?