Haber (A Ver) cuando

Since I'm the only one of my friends who speak Spanish, it's not uncommon for one of them to ask me to translate the occassional text message, and usually this is not a problem. Usually. But this time they sent me one that had me stumped...

Saludos, haber cuando vienes a Tijuana

I kinda figured the message meant something to the effect of "when are you coming to Tijuana". But I had absolutely no idea what haber cuando meant, so it was time to bring in the big guns. I called my profesora, and she gave me a wonderful explanation.

In fact, her explanation is so good that I'm not even going to bother to attempt to explain it myself, I'm just going to post her reply verbatum.

Here it is:

I know things like this tend to be kinda complicated.

1st of all....HABER es un verbo auxiliar - to have.....

which doesn't help to answer your question...obviously.

It's just one of those crazy ways to say things.... in your case... it translates like this...

Greetings, let's see when (hope that..) you come to Tijuana.
Meaning---- when are you coming to mexico? I want to see you.


Ejemplo. If I tell you. When are we having a class at the river? (It's a nice place- therefore I wanna go)

I could say....

Haber cuando tenemos una clase en el rio....

SO....some possible answers could be ......

No, no me gusta el rio.....
Tal vez la semana que viene....
Claro, tengamos la clase del sabado en el rio....
Etc.....

In Mexico is very common that people invite for dinner (because we're just cool like that) lol ....and they would say....

Haber cuando vienes a cenar con nosotros.
Haber cuando vienes a la casa a cenar con la familia.....

Also, since you like dancing...your friends or you might say....

Haber cuando vamos a bailar, tengo ganas de bailar salsa.

Traveling....

Haber cuando vamos a las Piramides de teTeotihuacan
Haber cuando vamos al Castillo de Chapultepec

Conclusion....

It can mean different things....such as....
.....hope that...(you, we,etc) do something or go somewhere....
.....we should go to......
......I like (something) let's do something....


Hope I was a little clear.... ;-)

In your case you could say.....

Gracias por los saludos....
Si me gustaria ir a Tijuana, tal vez vaya en unos meses.....
etc...

Here... the person meant...hoping that...you come to Tijuana...

So there you have it. A (relatively) short explanation with several good examples. Although our good friends at WordReference had one more thing to add: The correct expression is a ver, not haber. The confusion happens because they sound the same in spoken language. You can read about it yourself in this thread.

From a more practical standpoint, it's obvious that haber cuando is heavily used, and therefore we need to know what it means and how to use it, even if the correct grammatical expression is a ver cuando.

I hope you find this piece of Spanish as interesting as I did.

¡Cuidense!