Spanish Verb Haber
The word "have" in English can cause us a lot of trouble when we translate into Spanish. That is because the word have can mean so many things in English. Consider the following examples:
- The lady had three children. - POSSESSION
- The lady had a baby last night. - "GIVE BIRTH"
- The lady had to give the baby a bottle. - OBLIGATION TO DO SOMETHING
- The lady has given the baby the bottle. - PAST EVENT
In Spanish we actually have more than one verb to say "have". The one that we are going to focus on in this lesson, however, is POSSESSION. By this we mean, "have" when we mean "I own" something, or "I am holding something in my possession". For this meaning of "have" we use the verb TIENE.
The first part of the verb "have" is "tien". Remember, this is the STEM of the verb. Normally, the stem doesn't change. It remains the same in all forms. For the verb "have", however, this is not true. There are going to be some exceptions that we will have to memorize. The verb "have" is an "E" category verb. With that information, we would normally expect to be able to figure out all of the forms on the chart. Unfortunately, with "have" this is not the case.
To begin with, we have to know that the "IE" of the stem will change to "E" when we use the "we" form of the verb. Notice the following chart.
STEM CATEGORY MATCH
TIEN E S
TIEN E ...
TEN E MOS
TIEN E N
You may have noticed that I left out the first line of the chart. That would be the form of the verb that matches "yo", to say "I have". The reason that it was left out is that it is an exception. When we are dealing with the present tense of verbs, if there is an irregularity, it will usually come in the "yo" form of the verb.
We would expect the first line of the chart to be: TIEN--O, that is, the stem would be "tien", the vowel in the middle (in this case an "e") would drop out, and there would be an "o" on the end. That would give us "tieno" for "I have". This is not the case, however. The "yo" form of the verb "have" is TENGO.