| Hola! Soy Brenda Romaniello, tu profesora de español. |
| Hoy vamos a hablar del verbo haber y el uso impersonal de este verbo tan particular en español. |
| Today, we’re going to have a look at the impersonal use of the verb haber in Spanish. |
| So there’s two different uses for the verb haber in Spanish, and one of them which is not the one that we’re gonna talk about today is the one when we want to talk about past tense with phrasal verbs in Spanish, to say something like he visitado, he vivido (“I have lived” or “I have visited” a place). That’s not the use that we’re going to use, that we’re going to see today when we use el verbo haber in Spanish. We’re going to use it for, to talk about impersonal sentences and how we use el verbo, the verb haber in these impersonal sentences and what it means. |
| This verb, we use it to talk about the existence of things in Spanish. We use it to talk about the existence of things or people and it has a little, it’s very weird to translate it into English. It doesn’t have a specific description that we can use. We’ll just use it to talk about the existence of things and you’re gonna notice, you’re gonna see what I mean when we use a few examples. |
| So we’re going to start off with the present tense in the indicative mood in Spanish and when we use hay. When do we use this impersonal use for hay and why is it impersonal? So when is it impersonal? The sentence is impersonal in Spanish when there is no person performing the action. So, something simply happens or exists and that’s when we use this verb in the third person singular and we don’t change it matching anything else in the sentence. |
| Hay means “there is” and “there are” in English. |
| So as you can see that it means two different things in English and in English, we’re going to use “there is” if whatever follows is a singular object or person, and “there are” if we’re talking about two people or things or more. In the case of Spanish, we’re just going to keep it in the singular form. We’re gonna always say hay regardless of whatever follows, be it a singular or a plural thing. |
| Por ejemplo, quiero que respondas esta pregunta: |
| ¿Qué hay en una escuela? |
| So, for example, I want you to answer this question: |
| “What is there in a school?” What can you find in a school? What exists in a school? |
| Podemos decir: |
| Hay libros. |
| Hay estudiantes. |
| En una escuela hay maestros. |
| En una escuela hay mesas. |
| Hay sillas. |
| Etc. |
| Puedes ver que aquí estamos describiendo la existencia de cosas o personas que hay en una escuela, que existen, que suceden en una escuela. |
| So, there are students, books, teachers, teacher’s tables, seats, chairs, all this is to describe what we can find, what is there in a school, what does it exist? What can we find in a school using hay, “there is” and “there are.” |
| ¿Hay empanadas en tu país? |
| “Are there empanadas in your country?” |
| “¿Hay mucha gente en la cola?” |
| “Are there a lot of people in the queue?” |
| No hay papel para la impresora, tenemos que comprar más. |
| “There is no paper for the printer, we have to go and get more.” |
| So now, let’s talk about the past tense and we’re gonna compare había versus hubo. |
| So, these two verbs are in the past, but remember, we have two different past tenses in Spanish, for one in English which is the imperfecto and the pretérito. Había is conjugated in the third person of the imperfecto and hubo in the third person singular of the pretérito. |
| So now, we’re gonna have a look at what is the difference between them when we use one instead of the other and why would that be. |
| Había, we’re going to use it in the imperfecto to talk about when we describe something or someone in the past, a situation, a person. Anything that has to do with descriptions in the past, we’re going to use the imperfecto and therefore, we’re gonna use había in this particular case. |
| Hubo, we’re gonna use it in the pretérito to talk about the past action, a single past action that had no duration in the past and is not describing anything. It’s just simply telling a story, moving a story forward and just saying that simply something happened. |
| Vamos a ver algunos ejemplos con había: |
| Cerca de mi casa había un parque muy bonito con muchos árboles. |
| So “Close to my house, there was a park nearby, yes, with lots of, very pretty, with lots of trees.” |
| Here, we are describing what was close to my house, what was near my house and therefore because it’s a description in the past, we’re going to use había and not hubo, which is the imperfecto, no? We need to use the imperfecto in this case. |
| Había mucha gente en la playa porque hacía calor. |
| “There were a lot of people at the beach because it was really hot.” |
| So as you can see here, we’re describing the beach, what was it like. You can see it in your head. You can see this picture of there were many people and the weather condition as well which is also used in the imperfecto here because we’re describing the weather. |
| Nos perdimos y no había nadie para pedir direcciones. |
| “So we got lost and there was no one around to ask for directions.” |
| There was nobody, there was no one around, so we got lost and there was nobody around to ask for directions, yes, so he was describing this very unpleasant situation and you can feel the desperation, right? It’s just that description, see. There was no one around to ask for directions, meaning you can see the people like looking around and seeing if they can find someone. |
| Vamos a ver algunos ejemplos con hubo. Por ejemplo… |
| Hubo un accidente esta mañana. |
| Sí, “There was an accident this morning.” |
| I’m not describing the accident, I’m not describing the scene, I’m not describing the people involved, I’m just saying what happened this morning. Hubo un accidente, there “was an accident” this morning. |
| Hubo muchas cosas que no me gustaron de él. |
| “There were a few things that I didn’t like about him.” |
| So here, I’m not describing the person, I am not describing the thing, the setting, my feelings. We’re not describing here anything in the past. We’re just saying that simply, my opinion, what my opinion was about this person that I met or I spoke to here. There were many things that I didn’t like about him. |
| No hubo ni un solo día de calor este mes. |
| “There wasn’t even one hot day this month.” |
| Here, we’re not describing the weather. We’re not saying that it was, it wasn’t. Here, we’re saying that during that specific period of time in the past, something didn’t happen. |
| Muy bien, eso es todo por hoy. Espero que te haya gustado la clase. |
| That’s all for today. I really hope that you enjoyed this lesson and I hope to see you in the next one. ¡Adiós! ¡Nos vamos! |
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