why are there so many ways to say "Had"?
ok why is there tenia,tenido, habia, and tuve?? what the difference between each one??
5 Answers
Welcome to the forum. The problem is that you're trying to translate word-for-word, and you can't do that. English uses the word 'had' in a bunch of ways that don't match up exactly with Spanish words all the time.
To have = tener. Tuve = preterite tense, tenía = imperfect tense, tenido = past participle
Haber only means to have in the sense that it's used to construct compound verb tenses, like past perfect.
I had a dog when I was young = Tenía un perro cuando era joven
I had already eaten = Ya había comido
Don't try to say, "This word means 'had'" It will just confuse you.
Tenía is a past tense used for events that took place in the past with no definate time scale e.g. Cuando era pequeño tenía un perro. When I was small I had a dog. Tenido is the past participle of the verb often used with the verb Haber conjugated e.g. Hoy ha tenido un día horrible. Today he had a horrible day. Tuve is describe an action completed in the past e.g. El año pasado tuve un accidente. Last year I had an accident.
Haber and Tener are as I understand it (I'm intermediate you see..) different haves. Tener is to have something and haber is to have to do (have done) something. (Sorry If I'm wrong... that's what I thought it was anyway.) Tenia and tuve, on the other hand, are just different conjugations of the same verb 
One means you had something for a while in time and the other means you just plain had it (for a short time I suppose).
Then tenido is that you were "having it" for a while and either you still have it or you only just stopped having it. (Ahh that's confusing! 
)
Sorry again if I'm wrong, native speakers!
One might just as reasonably ask "Why does English use only one word ("have") for so many different meanings.
Do you know English or some other Romanic or Indo-European language? They all (I don't know if saying all is correct here, but I'm pretty sure) have more than one tense for verbs to describe actions that have happened in the past. I guess they are useful to describe certain aspects about actions in the past. In Spanish, one important distinction is whether you are talking about something that used to happen regularly in contrast to a single (and possibly sudden) incident.
In English you have tenses like past perfect, perfect, and simple past. And to make things more complicated you also have progressive aspect versions of each one.
You probably want to go to this website's section about Spanish verbs and read about preterit tense (indefinido), imperfect tense and present perfect. The last one also explains something about "haber" and "tener" in connection with the conjugation of verbs. It's a pretty good start although I think the article about the present perfect could use some additional details to distinguish this tense from the indefinido in Spain and Ibero-America.
