Saying There Were in Spanish

Saying There Were in Spanish How do you say there were? Should you use habà ­a?  You may have  seen people on the Internet use habà ­an. Correct Uses of Habia and Habian Undoubtedly thats true. But youve also heard people in English use the word aint and use grammatically questionable sentences such as everybody should do their best and it dont matter. Yet youre unlikely to see textbooks use them as examples. In teaching grammar, most textbooks and this site place their emphasis on what is considered standard speech used by educated speakers. In practice, they tend to be even more conservative than that, using as examples what educated speakers use in formal writing. As a general rule in both Spanish and English, probably all languages, formal writing is more grammatically precise than spontaneous speech. To use the example you gave, almost all textbooks will tell you that the singular form of haber is used for both singular and plural contexts when haber is used existentially, that is, with meanings such as there are, there will be or there were. Thus the same word, hay, is used to mean there is and there are in sentences such as hay una silla (there is one chair) and hay tres sillas (there are three chairs). The rule is invariably followed in the present indicative; thus hay means either there is or there are. However, in practice the rule isnt always followed in the other tenses, especially in speech and casual writing, although usage varies by region. Thus it isnt unusual to hear or read sentence constructions such as habà ­an tres aviones (there were three airplanes) or habrn dos elecciones (there will be two elections), to use examples from recent Latin American news articles. As a foreigner, youre best off knowing and using the standard grammar until youre in an area long enough to pick up the local language peculiarities. Although habà ­an is far from a major grammatical offense, to use a nonstandard usage in an area where it isnt the norm could make you sound miseducated or excessively informal.