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Old November 09, 2015, 12:43 PM
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AngelicaDeAlquezar AngelicaDeAlquezar is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Mexico City
Posts: 9,038
Native Language: Mexican Spanish
AngelicaDeAlquezar is on a distinguished road
@Desmond: Direction is the sense of orientation a person gets from being given instructions and references to arrive at a place. What many of these sentences do is just give you references of what you will find when you arrive at your destination or while walking along the path you have been suggested to follow.

Let's focus on the different structures that have been introduced, which mean different things even if all of them are used to let a person know their way to a place. So far, you have talked about three different structures that are expressed with three different verbs in Spanish: "ser", "estar" and "haber" (in its impersonal form). All three have also different and distinguishable forms in English:

In previous examples I said that sentences with "ser" need a demonstrative pronoun, while sentences with "estar" need a demonstrative adverb. Now a distinction must be made with "hay", which in English translates into the structure "there is / there are", and it is used to say what exists in a place.

See how different these two sentences are in English:
- The bank is there.
- There is a bank there.

The first sentence must use the verb "estar" and it expresses location: it says where the bank is: "El banco está ahí".
The second sentence is expressed with "haber" in its impersonal form "hay", and it expresses what exists in that place: "Ahí hay un banco".
If the original sentence in English would have been "That is the bank", then you would have used the verb "ser" to describe what the building you're pointing at is: "Ése es el banco."

Ser -> that/this + to be + place
- Ésta es la oficina de turismo.
- Éste es el aeropuerto.
- Ése es el teatro.
- Ésa es la catedral.

Estar -> here/there + to be + place
- Ahí está la oficina de turismo.
- Ahí está el aeropuerto.
- Aquí está el teatro.
- Aquí está la catedral.

Haber (impersonal conjugation = "hay") -> there is + place + there/here
- Ahí hay una oficina de turismo.
- Ahí hay un aeropuerto.
- Aquí hay un teatro.
- Aquí hay una catedral.

Let me advise you that you focus on the regularities of the structures more than the translation of a piece of the sentences. Otherwise nothing will ever make sense.
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