Урок 11. Выражения “There Is”, “There Are”. Lesson 11. “There Is”, “There Are” Expressions.

The expression ”there is” (or “there are”) has two uses in English:

• To point to the location of an object that is within view (e. g. “there are your glasses”)
• To state the existence of something (e. g. “there are tigers in India)

To express the first idea, Russian uses the word вот, which can mean “there”, “there is”, “there are”, “here”, “here is”, “here are”:

Вот мои карандаши.
There are (or Here are) my pencils.

Вот автобус.
Here’s (or there is) the bus.

To express the second meaning of “there is” (or “there are”), Russian uses the word есть in positive statements, and the word нет in negative statements:

В комнате есть кресло.
There is an armchair in the room.

В этом ряду нет свободных мест.
In this row there are no vacant seats.