haiga

haiga

1. (colloquial Northern, Balearic) first-person singular present subjunctive of haver

haiga

1. comitative singular of hai

• IPA^(key): /ˈaiɡa/ [ˈai̯.ɣ̞a]
• Rhymes: -aiɡa
• Syllabification: hai‧ga

Formed analogically on verbs having -g- inserted for their first-person present indicative and for all their present subjunctive (e.g. poner has pongo as its first-person present indicative and has -g- present in all its present subjunctive, including hacer, caer, oír, and decir). The -g- stem replaced many older verb stems, included -e-, -i-, -y-, all inherited from Latin, but did not replace the stems in the verb haber. Haiga was occasionally used in Old Spanish but never gained enough use to replace haya as other verb conjugations did with their verb.

haiga (archaic, dialectal, proscribed, sometimes used as a joke)

1. (chiefly Mexico, archaic) alternative form of haya (“there is, there are”)
   • 2003, Hugo Paredero, ¿Cómo es un recuerdo? La dictadura contada por los chicos que la vivieron, 426:

     Que haiga trabajo, que haiga muchos trabajos en el mundo para ganar plata.

     Let there be jobs, let there be lots of jobs so everyone in the world can earn money.

   Digamos que no haiga agua en tu casa, ¿no te preguntarías por qué e irías a investigar?

   Suppose there is no water in your house, wouldn't you wonder why and go investigate?

• Despite being declared incorrect by the Royal Spanish Academy, it is still widely used regionally by people, especially those of lower income and as such is sometimes used to imitate them in jokes.

From the phrase el coche más grande que haiga (literally “the biggest car there is”). haiga (see the first etymology under this section) is a nonstandard conjugation of the verb haber (the standard form is haya) and is often linked to how a person of low income speaks. Big cars were too linked with low-income individuals who wanted to appear very important, thus haiga became a pejorative name for big cars.

haiga m (plural haigas)

1. (rare, derogatory, Spain) a huge and flashy motorcar, automobile

• “haiga”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024