Another common use of Haver is to indicate that an amount of time has passed before the present moment. It roughly corresponds to the English adverb “ago”, or to other expressions which signal that a certain measure of time has passed.
When used in this way, Haver is only conjugated in the third person singular, “há”. This is known as Haver‘s “impersonal” use: the verb doesn’t have a specific subject, so there are no other conjugations. Let’s have a look at how it works. Examples:
As piscinas fecharam há cinco minutos.
Há muito que não comia panquecas assim.
Estou à espera do cartão há seis meses.
Similarly, Haver can be used to ask how long something has been going on for. Examples:
Há quanto tempo estás à espera?
Está a chover há muito?
Notice that “há” by itself means nothing – it always requires a quantifier (muito, pouco, algum, etc.) or a specific amount of time (seis minutos, dois meses, vinte anos, etc.).
