A1
有 — having, and there being
How 有 works for both possession and existence in Chinese, why it is the one verb that can never take 不, and what changes when a place goes in front of it.
有 is to have, and it works the way you would expect.
我有兩個孩子。
Wǒ yǒu liǎng ge háizi.
I have two children.
他有一輛車。
Tā yǒu yí liàng chē.
He has a car.
Note 兩 rather than 二 in the first one. Before a measure word, two is 兩 — see numbers.
With a place in front, it means “there is”
The same verb, the same shape. Put a location where the subject would go and 有 stops being about ownership and starts being about existence.
桌子上有一本書。
Zhuōzi shang yǒu yì běn shū.
There’s a book on the table.
附近有一家咖啡店。
Fùjìn yǒu yì jiā kāfēidiàn.
There’s a café nearby.
English needs a whole scaffolding for this — there is, there are, there was — and Chinese needs nothing but word order. The thing that exists comes after 有, which is why it is nearly always indefinite: a book, not the book.
沒, never 不
有 is the one verb in the language with a fixed negative, and it is worth learning as a single unit rather than as a rule you apply.
我沒有錢。
Wǒ méiyǒu qián.
I don’t have any money.
那兒沒有人。
Nàr méiyǒu rén.
There’s nobody there.
我不有車。
我沒有車。
不有 does not exist. This is not a tense rule or a style preference — there is no sentence in which it is correct.
In speech the 有 often drops out of the negative altogether: 我沒錢, 我沒時間. Both are natural, and 沒有 is never wrong.
Asking
有沒有 is the A-not-A form, and it is how most yes/no questions about existence get asked.
附近有沒有銀行？
Fùjìn yǒu méiyǒu yínháng?
Is there a bank nearby?
你有沒有時間？
Nǐ yǒu méiyǒu shíjiān?
Do you have time?
有…嗎 asks the same thing and is equally common: 附近有銀行嗎？
有 and 是 both translate as “there is”
They are not interchangeable. 有 introduces something new — the listener does not yet know it is there. 是 identifies what a known space contains, and tends to mean the space is filled by it.
桌子上有一本書。
Zhuōzi shang yǒu yì běn shū.
There’s a book on the table.
桌子上是我的書。
Zhuōzi shang shì wǒ de shū.
What’s on the table is my book.
The first tells you something is there. The second assumes you can see it and tells you whose it is.