Haber Conjugation: Imperative, Conditional & Subjunctive Moods

We use the imperative to give direct orders or commands. However, the imperative of haber has lost its use with the course of time. Nowadays, you wouldn't find this tense in any real language context, unless you are reading a literary text from medieval Spanish literature!

So the good news is that you won't have to study this tense! But let's take a look at its forms, so that you can recognize them:

We use the conditional to talk about hypotheses or possibilities. So use this tense to say what might (or not) have been.

To conjugate haber in the conditional, we need to add the following endings to its stem (habr-):

As an Impersonal Verb

Use the form habría meaning 'there would be' when making an estimation.

• Me dijeron que habría una sesión a las 5. (They told me there would be a showing at 5.)
• Habría unas cien personas en la sala. (There would be around a hundred people in the movie theater.)

Translation: They told me there would be a showing at 5.

The subjunctive is a mood or way of expressing subjective information, such as wishes, possibilities or uncertainty.

To conjugate haber in the present subjunctive, we need the irregular stem hay-, to which we will add the following endings:

Expressing Wishes

When talking about wishes, you can start your sentences with:

• Espero que (I hope)
• Ojalá (Hopefully/I hope)

Tania couldn't go to Lorena's party because she had to get on a plane to Guatemala. When she arrives, she gets this message:

Lorena: Espero que hayas tenido un buen vuelo. (I hope you have had a good flight.)

Tania: ¡Ojalá lo hayáis pasado bien en la fiesta! (I hope you (all) have had a good time at the party!)

Translation: I hope you have had a good flight.

Possibilities

To talk about possibilities or what might have happened, use the expressions:

• Posiblemente (Possibly)
• Probablemente (Probably)
• Quizás (Maybe)

Lorena and her mom are waiting for her dad to come and have dinner together, but he's not home yet.

Lorena: Quizás haya tenido una reunión. (Maybe he has had a meeting.)

Mom: Estoy en un atasco. (I'm stuck in a traffic jam.) Probablemente haya habido un accidente. (There has probably been an accident.)

When he finally arrives, they all have dinner together.

Mom: Puede que haya pasteles en la despensa. (There may be cakes in the pantry.)

Puede que haya pasteles. (There may be cakes.)

Negative Suppositions

For negative suppositions, start your sentence with No creo que (I don't think that).

Lorena: No creo que haya pasteles, porque nos los comimos todos ayer. (I don't think there are any cakes, because we ate them up yesterday.)

In this lesson, we have studied the Spanish verb haber, which can be used in two different ways:

• As an impersonal verb, meaning 'to be/exist'. In this case, we only use the third person singular.
• As an auxiliary verb, meaning 'to have'.

We have learned how to conjugate haber in three different tenses: