Imperfect Indicative of haber
What are the English translations?
- había
- habías
- había
- habíamos
- habíais
- habían
And where can I find verb conjugations that have the English translations included?
http://www.spanishdict.com/conjugate/haber - doesn't have translations.
http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/había - doesn't have translations.
http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/100048/imperfect-past - is pretty much unreadable.
Thanks, Mark.
8 Answers
Mark - your comment above is incorrect.
What is this?
Nunca habían ido a Costa Rica antes del verano pasado. / They had never been to Costa Rica before last summer.
I got this from the translate function. There are 100s of sentences using haber
Hello Mark I suggest that you put "había" into the translate function under "Menu" above.
You will then get all the information you need about the Spanish verb "Haber" and translations of sentences.
I made it easy for you - click here.
.
Here is a site I found on google. If this and other answers aren't enough try searching. As I said haber is an odd verb.NB the link top right of the use of haber in the impersonal form. Haber 123 verbs
I think you are making life too difficult for yourself. If grammar is so important to you, do you have a good grasp of grammar in your native language? I had to revise my English grammar as I realised I had forgotten what an indirect object was and what a transitive and intransitive verb was. I bought a book English grammar for students of Spanish. You would probably pick up a good second hand copy. I found it helpful. However, I learned Spanish at school when my English grammar was good. I bought the book when I decided to go back to studying Spanish having not used it for many years.
When you learnt your first language you were reasonably fluent before you were taught to read and write. You learnt by gradually joining words together, regularly making mistakes and listening to people saying it correctly. In answer to what did you do yesterday your answer would be I go to the beach. Your use of yesterday, means you are understood even without the past tense.
There is no real need to translate every conjugation. The guide sets out some translations where it says they would etc you can use they used to.
There is a book 501 Spanish Verbs which conjugates them and has an excellent section at the back on grammar and also example sentences. If you like reading about things it is useful, but if you are not careful instead of learning how to conjugate you just look in the book. To speak with fluidity you need to learn the verb endings.
You have chosen haber which is an odd verb. Its main use is as an auxiliary verb eg in tenses like he ido - I went present perfect. Habia ido I had gone. The very important and useful other part of haber is:
Hay. There is/ there are
había there used to be
hubo there was.
I find word reference very useful. There are two dictionaries The second, collins better on idioms a discussion forum which is good for phrases a monolingual dictionary + RAE the main Spanish dictionary. Here is there entry for había conjugator is also there.
Do spend time on pronunciation. Work on your agility in the present tense, if you start with yesterday or last week they will recognise you cannot remember the tense.
I found the imperfect an easy tense. There aren't many irregular verbs. Do learn ir(to go) ser(to be) estar(to be) and tener ( to have) in past tense. Confusingly in the preterite tense ser and ir are the same.
Try and learn phrases, it will give you a better feel for the language
If you are determined to learn as quickly as possible check out this blog Fluent in 3 months
The answer to your original question ("What are the English translations?") is:
había = I had
habías = You (singular, familiar) had
había = he, she, it, or you (singular, formal) had
habíamos = we had
habíais = you (plural, familiar) had
habían = they, or you (plural, formal) had
Please be warned that with this information you might easily make many fairly serious mistakes with Spanish. If you think that Habías dos libros means You had two books, you are wrong. The other replies to your post (and comments on those replies) explain why.
My answer to your other original question ("And where can I find verb conjugations that have the English translations included?") is: I don't know. For simplicity, conjugation charts tend to omit the English translation for each grammatical person. They count on the ability of learners to do an easy bit of extrapolation.
By convention, the conjugations are often presented in a format like this (or in two columns, one for singular and one for plural):
I
you (familiar)
he, she, it, you (formal)
we
you (familiar)
they, you (formal)
If you know that caminar means to walk, and you look up the simple present indicative conjugation...
camino
caminas
camina
caminamos
camináis
caminan
... you can figure out that these words mean
I walk
you walk
he/she/it/you walk(s)
we walk
you walk
they/you walk
The problem with "haber" is that it has two very different usages.
The first is to say "there is" "there are" that" hay Hay veinte estududiantes en la clase.
To say that there were use "habia" (imperfect) or "hubo" (preterite) It depends on the situation.
The other use is to form the present perfect tenses and past perfect tenses.
They are always used with a past participle of your main verb.
He hablado--- I have spoken (these are all in the "present perfect" tense)
Hashablado ---You (familiar) have spoken.
Ha hablado. él, ella usted --he, she you (formal) has/have spoken
Hemos hablado ---we have spoken
Habéis hablado,---You (informal plural --Spain only) have spoken.
Han hablado They or you pl. have spoken
Yo había hablado --I had spoken, (Past perfect tense)"
At this point you can use the information that others have provided to get the additional forms.
Yo hube hablado ---I had spoken (Past anterior perfect) not used outside of literature.
Yo habré hablado--- I will have spoken---future perfect
Yo habría hablado I would have spoken---conditional perfect.
que yo haya hablado -- present subjunctive perfect. The forms are easy it when to use it that's tricky. And the English meaning changes, depending on how you use it. The principal meaning being "that I may have spoken"
Que hubiera hablado---Imperfect subjunctive "that I might have spoken."
Que hubiere hablado --future subjunctive. Not used outside of very old literature, and I can't think of an English equivalent, probably because there isn't one.
Now I didn't put all the forms down because the other members already did this. But I did give the English equivalent which I think is what you were looking for.
Okay. Here are 25 1st person singluar conjugations. I have the Spanish for some (but for some I don't know what the Spanish 'haber'-child means), and I have the English for others (but am missing the Spanish altogether). Any help with this will be very greatly appreciated. ...and please help me to learn my own way (that is more important than you suspect)... please.
{Present Indicative} [yo] he {'eh' [I] have}
{Preterite Indicative} [yo] hube {'OUH-beh' [I] had}
{Future Indicative} [yo] habré {'ah-BRREH' [I] will have}
{Imperfect Indicative //aka: Perfect} [yo] había {'ah-BEEAH' [I] have had} <'have had' #1
{Conditional Indicative //aka: Pluperfect} [yo] habría {'ah-BRREE-ah' [I] had}
{Future Perfect Indicative} [yo] ? {'' I will have had} <'will have had' #1
{Present Subjunctive} [yo] haya {'ahyah' [I] have}
{Imperfect Subjunctive} [yo] hubiera {'ouh-bee-EHRR-ah' [I] had}
{Future Subjunctive} [yo] hubiere {'ouh-BEE-ehreh' [I] ???}
{Present Perfect} [yo] he habido {'eh ah-BEE-doh' [I] have had} <'have had' #2 (?)
{Preterite Perfect} [yo] hube habido {'OUH-beh ah-BEE-doh' [I] had had} <'had had' #1
{Past Perfect} [yo] había habido {'ah-BRREH ah-BEE-doh' [I] ??? had}
{Conditional Perfect} [yo] habría habido {'ah-BRREH ah-BEE-doh' [I] had had} <'had had' #2 (?)
{Future Perfect} [yo] habré habido {'ah-BRREH ah-BEE-doh' [I] will have had} <'will have had' #2 (?)
{Present Perfect Subjunctive} [yo] haya habido {'ahyah ah-BEE-doh' [I] have had}
{Past Perfect Subjunctive} [yo] hubiera habido {'ouh-BEE-ehrah ah-BEE-doh' [I] had had} <'had had' #3 (?)
{Future Perfect Subjunctive} [yo] hubiere habido {'ouh-BEE-ehreh ah-BEE-doh' [I] ??? had}
{Present Indicative Progressive} ??? {[I] am having}
{Past Indicative Progressive} ??? {[I] was having}
{Future Indicative Progressive} ??? {[I] will be having}
{Perfect Indicative Progressive} ??? {[I] have been having}
{Pluperfect Indicative Progressive} ??? {[I] had been having}
{Future Perfect Indicative Progressive} ??? {[I] will have been having}
{Present Conditional Progressive} ??? {[I] would be having}
{Perfect Conditional Progressive} ??? {[I] would have been having}
As has often been the case in my engineering career, I have to invent a formal methodology in which to frame my quest for (ordered) knowledge. It makes learning easier (at least for me).
Below is my conjugation methodology & format. Imagine that the columns line up vertically -- (can't be done in this primitive editor).
- {Present Indicative //aka: Present}
- [yo] he {'eh' [I] have} //irregular
- [tú] has {'ahs' [you] have}
- [él/ella/usted] ha {'ah' [he/she/it] has}
- [nosotros] hemos {'EH-mohs' [we] have}
- [vosotros] habéis {'ah-BEHEES' [y'all] have}
- [ellos/ellas/ustedes] han {'ahn' [they] have}
Key:
1 - English & Spanish segments are delimited by '{' and '}'.
{ this is an English segment } this is a Spanish segment { English } Spanish { English } Spanish ... etc.
2 - Implied words are delimited by '[' & ']'
Example: [yo]
3 - Pronunciation is delimited by single-quote ( ' ).
Example: 'ah-BEHEES'
4 - A comment begins with '//' and extends to the end of the segment (English in an English segment, Spanish in a Spanish segment).
