No. 36 in Hebrew
היו
"היו" means "were" or "have been" in English.
In a sentence
היו לי שלושה כלבים כשהייתי ילד.
I had three dogs when I was a child.
Here, 'היו' is used as part of the past tense verb phrase indicating possession or existence of dogs in the past.
לא היו סיבות לדאגה, הכל היה בסדר.
There were no reasons to worry, everything was fine.
In this context, 'היו' serves to express the existence of reasons in the past tense.
אם היו לנו יותר זמן, היינו מסיימים את הפרויקט.
If we had had more time, we would have completed the project.
Here, 'היו' is employed in a conditional past construction to express a hypothetical scenario.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “היו” in actual Hebrew podcasts.
Find “היו” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Hebrew podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into עברית, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Hebrew books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).