Help with past haber construction?

Question

Hello everyone,

I'm wondering if someone can help me with the following. A native speaker helped me with this once time but i can't seem to remember it correctly, and it's hard to translate word for word. Basically i'm trying to say something along the lines of "Sorry that I haven't written sooner" in spanish. Originally I thought this would require the subjunctive, meaning something like "Siento que no te hubiera escrito antes", but this is unnecessary, I guess because there is no subject change. So I think the correct way to say this would be "Siento no te haber escrito antes", using the infinitive of haber. Is this correct? If you could explain why this is (or is not) the case that would be great...

Thanks alot, Ben

Answer 1

Hello Ben and Welcome to the SpanishDict forum

I think ...it would be /you could say:

Lo siento por no haber escrito más pronto = I am sorry for not having written sooner

Lo siento que no he escrito más pronto = I am sorry that I have not written sooner

Lo siento por demora de escribir = I am sorry for the delay in writing

I hope this helps

Corregid mi español,, por favor

Answer 2

Hi Luke77

I know this wasn't exactly what you were asking but here are some impersonal uses of haber that I thought you might find useful.

There is another use of "haber" which is the impersonal use and means something like "there to be", not good English I know, however, some examples which might make it a bit clearer.

Hay - There is/are

Haya - let there be, may there be

habido - there having been

habiendo - there being

había - there was/were (imperfect)

hubo - there was/were (past definite)

habrá - there will be

habría- there would be

ha habido- there has been

había habido - there had been

etc, etc, etc with all the other terms using habido.

I believe there is also a form "ha" used to denote "ago" as in expressions of time, example "mucho tiempo ha" a long time ago.

Eddy the ha form exists in Brazilian Portuguese I was not aware it also existed in Spanish ??? - FELIZ77, Apr 4, 2011

But in portuguese it has an accent: há = hay (Sp) = there is /there are vb from from haver (to have) - FELIZ77, Apr 4, 2011