- There is an apple. - There are apples. Is it: - Il y a une pomme. // Il y a des pommes. there is/are=il y a

My response came a little late i guess ,but let's see from what i know we say il y'a une pomme for the singular and il y'a des pommes for the plural exactly like we say il y'a beacoup d'hommes ce soir :there are lots of men this evening but when we say there are many we say il sont beaucoup ou plusieur when it's a state we conjugate the to be in french which is the verb etre otherwise we look for an alternative to the sentence.

Can "il est" mean something like "it is"?

Oh, thank you.

a = verb avoir (to have). Verbs are not to be translated litterally from one laguage to the other. It does not work that way. "il est une pomme" means "he is an apple", and that doesn't make sense. To show the difference between one and several apples, we say "une" for one and "des" for several.