Turkish lacks a explicit free morpheme (i.e., a separate word) for &quot;to be&quot;, but it most definitely has translational equivalents, most notably the &quot;zero copula&quot; used for predicate adjectives and nouns in the simple present tense, declarative mood. All other situations involve an explicit inflectional marker (either a suffix or a clitic) that translates &quot;is&#x2F;are&#x2F;were&quot;.<p>This is not unusual; lots of languages work that way. And in my experience, it does reduce the use of copula constructions compared to English, but not by much.<p>Incidentally, the &quot;extra verb tense&quot; you refer to is formally called &quot;evidentiality&quot;, and is not considered the same thing as a&quot; tense&quot; by linguists. That&#x27;s also fairly common in many languages, though it may seem exotic to English speakers.