hi ha

In short

Why it looks that way

Impersonal: it never changes for person or number — hi ha un cafè, hi ha dos cafès. The same word lives in no hi ha de què — don't mention it

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

• Hi ha aigua?

  Is there water?

Nearby words: verbs

I want, I can, I am going, I know. Twenty verbs cover more everyday sentences than two hundred nouns.

• soc

  to be (by essence)

  The I-form of ésser — to be by essence: origin, profession, character. For states and places there is the second link, estar: estic bé, estic a casa
• vull

  I want

  From voler, to want. A bare vull sounds blunt; people soften it to volia — I would like
• anar

  to go

  The most irregular verb of them all: vaig, vas, va, anem. And it builds the future too: demà vaig — tomorrow I'll go
• menjar

  to eat

  Both to eat and to have lunch: mengem a les dos? — lunch at two? The we-form with g is a hallmark of the norm; central Catalan says menjem. The noun for food is the same word
• beure

  to drink

  Drinking plain and simple. Softer and wider is prendre: prenguem alguna cosa? — shall we have something?
• llegir

  to read

  The I-form is llig, one syllable: a Valencian hallmark where the central norm says llegeixo. Same letters, different syllables — the norms differ at once by ear
• parlar

  to speak

  To speak and to talk. I speak is parle, through e: the Valencian hallmark instead of the central parlo. Saying something concrete is dir: diu que sí
• treballar

  to work

  To work on something is treballar en; to work as someone is treballar de
• viure

  to live

  To live somewhere and to be alive. Viure a — live in a place, viure de — live on something
• tenir

  to have

  The I-form is tinc. Age, hunger and cold are had with it: tinc trenta anys, tinc gana, tinc fred

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “verbs”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Verbs11 words on the topic
• m'agrada — I like itverb
• el valencià — Valencian (the language)noun
• aprendre — to learnverb
• onze — elevennumeral
• All Valencian wordsIndex by topic