יֵשׁ says that something exists; אֵין says that it does not. Between them they cover an enormous amount of everyday Hebrew — everything English does with there is, there are, there was, there aren't. This page is the existential pair on its own. Possession, which is built out of the same words plus a ל־, is on יש לי.
יש מסעדה טובה ברחוב הזה, בדיוק מול הבנק.
yesh mis'adá tová barekhóv hazé, bediyúk mul habánk
There's a good restaurant on this street, right opposite the bank.
אין חלב במקרר, אני יורדת לקנות.
ein khaláv bamekarér, aní yorédet liknót
There's no milk in the fridge — I'm going down to get some. (f. speaker)
יש מקום לעוד אחד?
yesh makóm le'ód ekhád?
Is there room for one more?
Two words with no forms
This is the structural fact, and it is unusually good news. In everyday Modern Hebrew יש and אין do not inflect. There is no person, no gender, no number, no infinitive, no participle. Whatever exists and however many of it there are, the word is יש. Both words do have inflected sets in the higher registers — one each — and they are recognition material only; they are flagged below.
| Does it exist? | Hebrew | Note |
|---|---|---|
| one masculine thing | יש חדר פנוי | יש |
| one feminine thing | יש בעיה | יש — unchanged |
| many things | יש הרבה אנשים | יש — unchanged |
| none of it | אין מקום | אין |
So אני יש and להיות יש are not merely wrong, they are unbuildable: there is no paradigm for them to be a cell of. If you find yourself wanting to make יש agree with something, the impulse is coming from English or from another Romance or Germanic language, not from Hebrew.
יש הרבה אנשים בחוץ, בואו ניכנס מהצד.
yesh harbé anashím bakhúts, bó'u nikanés mehatsád
There are a lot of people outside — let's go in round the side. (to a group)
ישנם מקרים שבהם אפשר לבטל את החוזה.
yeshnám mikrím shebahém efshár levatél et hakhozé
There are cases in which the contract may be cancelled. (formal — a contract, a legal opinion)
Word order: the existential opens its clause
An existential clause starts with יש or אין. The thing whose existence is being asserted comes after it, and any place expression can either follow the whole clause or be fronted to the very beginning:
| Order | Example | English |
|---|---|---|
| יש + thing + place | יש קולנוע בעיר | there's a cinema in town |
| place + יש + thing | בעיר יש קולנוע | in town there's a cinema |
The two are not free variants: fronting the place makes it the topic, which is what you want when the place is already under discussion. What you cannot do is put the thing first and יש after it as a neutral statement — that order exists, but it is a topicalised answer to a question, not a way of introducing something new.
בדירה יש שני חדרים ומרפסת קטנה.
badirá yesh shnei khadarím umirpéset ktaná
The flat has two rooms and a small balcony.
בעיר אין קולנוע, נוסעים עשרים דקות לקניון.
ba'ír ein kolnóa, nos'ím esrím dakót lakanyón
There's no cinema in town — you drive twenty minutes to the mall.
The present is frozen; the past and future are not
Here is the teachable asymmetry, and it is the part of the system worth understanding rather than memorising. Because יש has no tense, Hebrew borrows the past and the future from היה — an ordinary verb, which therefore does agree with the thing that exists.
| Present | Past | Future | |
|---|---|---|---|
| m. sg | יש חדר פנוי | היה חדר פנוי | יהיה חדר פנוי |
| f. sg | יש בעיה | הייתה בעיה | תהיה בעיה |
| pl | יש בעיות | היו בעיות | יהיו בעיות |
| negative | אין בעיה | לא הייתה בעיה | לא תהיה בעיה |
Read the last row carefully, because it is the one nobody tells you: אין has no past either, and the past of there isn't is not built from אין at all. It is לא plus the past of היה.
היה שם המון אנשים, בקושי נכנסנו.
hayá sham hamón anashím, bekóshi nikhnásnu
There was a huge crowd there — we barely got in. (the normative rule agrees the verb with המון, not with אנשים; in practice היו שם המון אנשים is at least as common)
היו שם הרבה בעיות עוד לפני שהתחלנו.
hayú sham harbé be'ayót od lifnéi shehitkhálnu
There were plenty of problems there before we'd even started.
יהיה כיף, תביאי גם את אחותך.
yihyé keif, tavi'í gam et akhotékh
It'll be fun — bring your sister too. (to a woman)
לא היה חלב במקרר, אז שתיתי קפה שחור.
lo hayá khaláv bamekarér, az shatíti kafé shakhór
There was no milk in the fridge, so I had my coffee black.
What follows יש is normally indefinite
An existential sentence introduces something into the conversation, so what it introduces is usually new, and new things are indefinite: יש מסעדה, אין חלב, יש בעיה. When the thing is already definite — you both know which bank — careful Hebrew reaches for נמצא is located instead, which is a real verb and agrees like one.
הבנק נמצא ברחוב הרצל, ליד הדואר.
habánk nimtsá birkhóv Hértsel, leyád hado'ár
The bank is on Herzl Street, next to the post office.
And then there is what people actually say. Everyday Israeli routinely puts a definite noun after יש, with את in front of it, exactly as though it were a direct object:
יש את הספר הזה בספרייה, בדקתי אתמול.
yesh et haséfer hazé basifriyá, badákti etmól
They've got that book in the library — I checked yesterday. (colloquial Israeli, and extremely common)
הספר הזה נמצא בספרייה של האוניברסיטה.
haséfer hazé nimtsá basifriyá shel ha'universíta
That book is in the university library. (edited register — the same fact, phrased the way a copy-editor would leave it)
This is a register split, not a right-and-wrong. The prescriptive objection is a syntactic one: in יש מסעדה, the thing that exists is the subject of the clause, not an object, and את marks definite direct objects. Purists have argued against the construction since the 1950s — the history, and how recent the construction turns out to be, are on יש לי — but every Israeli says it, and no one will misunderstand you. Which of the two you should write, and when נמצא is the better choice anyway, is settled on יש vs נמצא.
Common Mistakes
1. Translating the English dummy there. English there is contains a word that means nothing; Hebrew's שם means in that place and means it seriously.
❌ שם יש בעיה עם ההזמנה
Incorrect as 'there's a problem with the booking' — שם puts the problem somewhere else, over there. The existential is יש on its own: יש בעיה עם ההזמנה.
✅ יש בעיה עם ההזמנה, אפשר לבדוק שוב?
yesh be'ayá im hahazmaná, efshár livdók shuv?
There's a problem with the booking — could you check again?
2. Keeping יש in the past. It has no past. The verb that supplies one agrees with what existed, so this is two changes at once, not one.
❌ אתמול יש הרבה אנשים בחוף
Incorrect — יש is present-tense only. The past comes from היה, agreeing with the thing that existed: אתמול היו הרבה אנשים בחוף.
✅ אתמול היו הרבה אנשים בחוף, היום אין אף אחד.
etmól hayú harbé anashím bakhóf, hayóm ein af ekhád
Yesterday there were loads of people on the beach; today there's nobody.
3. Building the negative past out of אין. The obvious repair for mistake 2 is to bolt a past tense onto אין, and there is nothing to bolt it to.
❌ אין היה חלב במקרר
Incorrect — אין is present-tense only and does not combine with היה. The negative past is לא plus the verb: לא היה חלב במקרר.
✅ לא היו מקומות בהופעה, החזירו לנו את הכסף.
lo hayú mekomót bahofa'á, hekhzíru lánu et hakésef
There were no seats left at the gig — they refunded us.
4. Using אין as a general negator. אין denies that something exists. Once you have named a subject and are saying something about it, the negator is לא.
❌ הוא אין בבית
Incorrect — אין denies existence; it does not negate a statement about somebody you have already named. Use לא before the predicate: הוא לא בבית.
✅ הוא לא בבית, נסי את המשרד.
hu lo babáyit, nasí et hamisrád
He's not at home — try the office. (to a woman)
Key Takeaways
- יש asserts existence, אין denies it, and in ordinary Modern Hebrew neither inflects — no person, gender, number, infinitive or participle.
- Both words have a higher-register inflected set — יֶשְׁנוֹ / יֶשְׁנָהּ / יֶשְׁנָם / יֶשְׁנָן for יש, אֵינֶנִּי / אֵינְךָ / אֵינוֹ for אין. Recognise them; write יש and אין.
- The existential opens its clause: יש קולנוע בעיר, or with the place fronted as topic, בעיר יש קולנוע.
- The present is frozen, the past and future are not. They come from היה, which agrees with the thing that exists: היה חדר, הייתה בעיה, היו בעיות.
- The negative past is לא היה, never *אין היה — אין has no past of its own.
- What follows יש is normally indefinite; a definite subject takes נמצא in careful Hebrew (הבנק נמצא ברחוב הרצל).
- יש את הספר is real, everyday Israeli speech and a live prescriptive argument, not a learner error — a register choice, not a mistake.
Now practice Hebrew
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- יש לי: Hebrew's Way of Saying 'Have'A1 — Hebrew has no verb meaning 'have'. It says instead that something exists to someone — יש לי אח — which makes the possessed thing the grammatical subject. That is why nothing agrees with the possessor, and why the past-tense forms look so alien to an English speaker.
- אין: Negating Existence and PossessionA1 — אין is the negative of יש, not of לא. It denies that something exists (אין מקום), denies that anyone has it (אין לי זמן), and in front of an infinitive it forbids (אין לעשן) — and because it already carries the negation, no second לא ever follows it.
- The Verbless Sentence: אני ישראליA1 — Hebrew's most basic sentence has a subject and a predicate and nothing joining them: אני ישראלי, הבית גדול, הם כאן. The predicate can be a noun, an adjective, a prepositional phrase or an adverb — and when it is an adjective it agrees with the subject in gender and number.