# Spanish Conjugation Help - haber **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 30, 2002, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960 "2002-03-30T21:24:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![chula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@chula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chula)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2002, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960/21 "2002-03-31T08:59:27Z")
Thanks for making that point **sailor**. I can’t imagine a situation in which you could use _haber_ in the imperative. You have a crappy Spanish teacher, **Qwertyasdfg** , if she’s teaching you hypothetical conjugations of irregular verbs. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2002, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960/22 "2002-03-31T12:29:38Z")
> [@](#): > > (Frankly, the only conceivable usage for imperative “haber” would be something like “hé terminado eso cuando vuelvo” = “have this finished by the time I come back,” but I don’t know if anyone actually talks like this. But it does exist.) That might come as news to Spanish speakers. That sentence is just plain wrong in Spanish. You cannot use haber in the imperative and you cannot just translate words from one language to another. The closest you could come would be “When I return I want you to have finished this” = “Cuando vuelva quiero que hayas acabado esto”. And speaking of Spanish teachers, I once dated one whose knowledge of Spanish was practically zero. There is no way she could maintain a conversation in Spanish as her knowledge was just a bit of vocabulary and grammar. No wonder the kids cannot learn from teachers like that. What I don’t understand is how someone like that can be teaching. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2002, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960/23 "2002-03-31T18:30:16Z")
Though the case could be that Qwertyasdfg’s teacher did not specifically assign “haber” as one of the verbs to work on, but just told the class “pick 25 verbs” and Q stepped onto the land mine. Which is why I mentioned cornering himself into a Zen Koan, since as **sailor** said, the forms we’ve been discussing have no usage in the actual language. We can _construct_ the modes/tenses, based on the rules of grammar, but it’s just mental gymnastics. ---
**Author:** ![Qwertyasdfg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/ecc23a/32.png) [@Qwertyasdfg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qwertyasdfg)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2002, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960/24 "2002-03-31T19:10:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JRDelirious \* > \*\*Though the case could be that Qwertyasdfg’s teacher did not specifically assign “haber” as one of the verbs to work on, but just told the class “pick 25 verbs” and Q stepped onto the land mine. > \*\* Yep, thats it. I picked haber because I sometimes have trouble with the real life conjugations, but this one was more than I bargained for. Thanks again. ---
**Author:** ![chula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@chula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chula)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2002, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960/25 "2002-03-31T19:56:56Z")
The correct answer is to leave the imperative blank. You still have to include the present subjunctive, which is nearly the same as the imperative, if it were to exist. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-conjugation-help-haber/100960.md?page=1)