¿Dónde está el café? vs. ¿Dónde hay el café?
¿dónde está el café? and ¿dónde hay el café?
are they same?
1 Answer
No they are not.
"¿Dónde está el cafe?" means "Where is the coffee." You are referring to coffee that you already know exists. Like someone told you to make coffee, but you respond "yeah, but where is it?" You would say "¿Dónde está el café?" Or maybe you were just taking a sip of your coffee but you got up to do something. You come back to the table and you can´t find your mug. So you´d say "¿Dónde está el café?" because you know it´s around here somewhere...
The second sentence, "¿Dónde hay el café?" is written incorrectly. It should say "¿Dónde hay café?" Haber is not followed by an article like "un, una, el, la" This sentence says "Where is there coffee?" Or "Where is coffee?" In this case, you really aren´t sure where it is or if it even exists. Perhaps you are in a foreign city and you want a cup of coffee. For all you know, this could be a town free of coffee shops (gasp!). You ask a townie "¿Dónde hay café?" (albeit a strange thing to ask someone: "WHERE IS COFFEE"). And they could say "No hay café en este pueblo" (There isn´t any coffee in this town) because maybe the mayor banned coffee because he thought it was evil. Then you´d be outta luck, wouldn´t you.
Estar means "to be" but in a sense of location. Haber means "there is/there are" but in a sense of existence, in general.
In a shorter explanation, the two sentences are translated as...
- Dónde está el café?=Where is the coffee? (referring to location)
- Dónde hay café?=Where is coffee? (referring to whether it exists and where it is)
