The French expression il y a, which can mean there is in French or there are in French, is one of the most important expressions in the French language.
The French expression Il y a means “There is” or “There are.” It can also express [a certain amount of time] “ago.”
In separate parts, the expression il y a does not add up to the meaning that it has all together.
Il – subject pronoun for “it”
y – adverbial pronoun for “there”
a – third person singular conjugation of avoir meaning “has”
Using Il y a in statements
Il y a une faute avec votre billet. Il y a+ indefinite article + noun
There is a mistake with your ticket.
Il y a quinze joueurs dans l’équipe. Il y a + number + noun
There are 15 players on the team.
Il y a beaucoup de vols ce soir. Il y a + expression of quantity + noun
There are a lot of flights tonight.
Negation:
Il n’y a pas de…. There isn’t any/There aren’t any…
Notes:
- The letter a, or the third person singular version of avoir, acts as the “verb” of the expression. The “ne” and the “pas” in the negation version of the expression sandwich the a in addition to the adverbial pronoun, y.
- To express this phrase in a different tense (i.e. There were… or There will be…), you must conjugate the third component, avoir (or a) to fit the desired verb tense. We will learn these conjugations of avoir in a later module.
- Remember when you negate a sentence, the indefinite article will always change to de.
Using Il y a in questions
Est-ce qu’il y a…Is it that there is/are…
Y a-t-il…Are/Is there…
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? What’s wrong?
Expressing “ago”
The French equivalent of expressing “ago,” is when the phrase Il y a is followed by a period of time.
| La famille a voyagé en Espagne il y a neuf mois. | The family traveled to Spain nine months ago. | |
| Il y a 7 ans, j’ai reçu mon diplôme. | Seven years ago, I received my diploma. | |
| Les professeurs se sont rencontrés il y a deux semestres. | The professors met each other two semesters ago. |
Useful vocabulary to remember:
an – year
mois – month
semaine – week
jour – day
heures – hours
minutes – minutes
The French expression il y a, which can mean “there is” or “there are”, is one of the most important expressions in the French language. It is most commonly followed by an indefinite article + noun, a number + noun, or an expression of quantity. To ask a question with il y a, you can either use est-ce que or inversion. To use il y a in a negative construction, place n’ (ne becomes n’ before a vowel sound such as y) in front of y and pas after a. Remember that the indefinite article must change to de due to the negative construction.