In the perfect tense quartet, we discussed how the verb haber was used as an "auxiliary verb", or a verb that is combined with other verbs to form a type of past tense. Now we are going to discuss how haber is used as a non-auxiliary type of verb.
You have probably said, "There is rain in the sky today." If not, you must either live in a hot place (like me 😢) or you just didn't use that exact sentence. What I want to discuss, however, is the underlined portion.
Haber is non-auxiliary here, and it is conjugated as "hay", which is translated as both "there is" and "there are" in English. A quick note, please don't pronounce hay as "hey". It's actually pronounced eye. "Hey" is a rookie mistake, just like pronouncing "ella" as "ela".
The present indicative is very easy, so we can just cruise by with a couple more examples:
Hay más sentimientos por ti. ｜There are more feelings for you.
Hay tristeza en mi corazón. ｜There is sadness in my heart.
Hay cuatro patos en el agua. ｜There are four ducks in the water.
Hay palabras portugués en mi mente. ｜There are Portuguese words in my mind.
Future tense (there will be) just uses the third person simple future conjugation of haber, which is habrá.
Habrá más comida mañana. ｜There will be more food tomorrow.
Habrá alguien por mí. ｜There will be someone for me.
Past tense and subjunctive is where it can get tricky. I'll go over past tense first. Remember that it always keeps the rules of the past preterite vs. imperfect. Imperfect is used to describe interrupted events. Preterite is used to describe finished events.
Había una mujer aquí ayer. ｜There was a woman here yesterday (implied: "but she's not here anymore")
Hubo un clase aquí. ｜There was a class here (implied: "but it's finished now")
It all depends on the implications after, which is why it can get tricky. But with practice, it'll come more easily. I highly recommend the Duolingo lesson over non-auxiliary Haber as long as you understand imperfect and subjunctive already.
Subjunctive offers the unknown (as we discussed earlier). We'll get to the auxiliary subjunctive later, but for now, know this. Haya is the present subjunctive conjugation of haber, and hubiera is the past subjunctive form, which we'll talk about later.
Pienso que haya una mujer aquí. ｜I think that there is a woman here.
Espero que hubiera algo actividad ayer. ｜I hope that there was some activity there.
As always, it takes practice, but eventually you'll get used to it. 😀