Sentence Clarification

Question

I have a Mexican friend who speaks decent English, but her English text is kind of broken. I asked her if she was working this summer and she said no. When I asked her why, she said "Why? because no work for me." She knows I've been spending the summer learning about Spanish, so I attempted to translate what she had written into Spanish as:

"¿Por qué? Porque no trabajo para mí." (Should I have used "trabaja"?)

She said this was wrong, but offered:

"Por qué no ahi trabajo para mí."

My understanding is that "Por qué" is "why" and "Porque" is because, and she agreed that this is right. I didn't understand her use of "ahi" at all. She is unable to explain why her sentence was right and why mine was wrong. I'm not even sure whether her use of "Por qué" was right, or a typo. Could someone clarify her sentence breakdown?

Answer 1

What she said was, "Porque no hay trabajo para mí."

"Because there is no work for me." "Ahí" and "hay" sound alike. I think these are called "homonyms" in English.

Now that I have answered your question, could you please do me a favor and fill out your profile so that we may know your gender and levels of English and Spanish? Believe me it makes it a lot easier for us to know how to answer your questions.

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I've been asked before, and I meant to, but now I will go and take care out it. Thanks for your time. - Ratlegion, Jun 23, 2015

Nice, Dani. - annierats, Jun 23, 2015

I was thinking of exactly the same sentence, Daniela, before I read your response. I knew there had to be the word hay in the sentence. lol - FELIZ77, Jun 23, 2015