היה לנו כיף במסיבה.

to be

Breakdown of היה לנו כיף במסיבה.

• לנו: to us
• מסיבה: party
• כיף: fun

Questions & Answers about היה לנו כיף במסיבה.

Why is it היה and not היינו, if the meaning is we had fun?

Because Hebrew is not phrasing this as we being the grammatical subject in the same way English does.

Literally, the structure is closer to:

there was fun to us at the party

So:

• היה = there was / it was
• לנו = to us / for us
• כיף = fun

In this kind of sentence, לנו expresses the people experiencing something, and היה often stays in the masculine singular form because it matches the idea of an impersonal there was construction.

So even though the natural English translation is we had fun, the Hebrew grammar is built differently.

What exactly does לנו mean here?

לנו means to us or for us.

It is made of:

• ל־ = to / for
• נו = us

In Hebrew, expressions about having something or experiencing something often use ל־ plus a pronoun:

• יש לי זמן = I have time (literally there is time to me)
• היה לנו כיף = we had fun (literally there was fun to us)

So לנו is the part that gives the meaning we in natural English translation.