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How does “haber” work in Spanish

Dieser Beitrag erklärt ein wichtiges Thema der spanischen Grammatik (Text auf Englisch).

Sometimes, you have one verb in English and two in Spanish. This happens with “to have”, which could be “tener” or “haber”, depending on the context.

Yo tengo un perro. I have a dog.
Yo he comprado comida para mi perro. I have bought food for my dog.

Let’s focus on the second one.

Brief explanation

“Haber” is a special verb in Spanish and it has two basic functions.

1. It is an auxiliary verb, that is to say, a verb whose function is to help another verb forming some tenses, as in “I have finished”, “yo he terminado”. There are two verbs here, but the meaning of the action is conveyed by the second one, which is the main verb.

2. It is an impersonal verb, which means that nobody is performing the verbal action. If I say “I work, you write, she sleeps”, you clearly see that these are personal verbs, someone is working, or writing or sleeping. But look at the impersonal forms of “haber”:

Hay un perro en el jardín. “There is a dog in the garden.” Nobody is doing anything.
Hay dos perros en el jardín. “There are two dogs in the garden.”

Notice that in English, we have two forms for “hay”, the singular “there is” and the plural “there are”, but in Spanish, it is always hay. One word and not two, and invariable.

Example from the episode

Read the full episode here →
Constance e Imran — Episode 1

And here you have a blog showing the difference between “hay, está, es, tiene”:
Hay / está / es / tiene