Okay, I was not satisfied with my answer, so I am going to give a different answer. And I think it is better. In the construction (There is/are...), "there" is an "empty pronoun" or an "empty grammatical word" because it has little meaning in itself. When you use "There is" or "There are" followed by a list, you use * "There is" if the first word in the list is singular, * "There are" if the first word in the list is plural. EXAMPLES: * "There is" if the first word in the list is singular: "There is a knife, a fork, and a spoon." It does not matter if the second or later noun is plural, so the following is also correct: "There is a knife, four forks, and seven spoons on the table." BUT you use * "There are" if the first word in the list is plural. "There are two knives, a fork, and a spoon." "There are two knives, one fork, and no spoons." What about no knife or no knives? Well, the first ("no knife") is singular and the second ("no knives") is plural, so we follow the same rule: "There is no knife, 10003 forks, and 5 billion spoons on the table." "There are no knives, one fork, and one spoon." But, "There are two knives, a fork, and a spoon."

Виктория, even though you have been given the answer already, I will explain why it is correct to say "there is" and not "there are". The structure "there is" in the sentence "there is a house" is a very particular structure. The subject of the sentence is "a house", "a house" conjugates the verb "to be" in the structure "there is". Now, you have to remember, that in certain cases you can omit the verb, such as: She dances and sings Both verbs are conjugated by the same person thus there is no need of repeating the subject for every verb. But if there are two verbs in a sentence, and one verb is conjugated by one person and the other verb is conjugated by a different person, you cannot omit the subject, and the conjugation has to agree with the subject. John sings, Mary dances. He has a beautiful voice and she moves nicely. In the sentence: There is a fork, a knife and a spoon Every subject conjugates the same verb, but as independent units (it, it, it), not as one plural unit (they). It is like saying There is a fork, (there is) a knife and (there is) a spoon. I hope this helps.

We can say either one of your examples. It depends what we have in mind (literally, how we are thinking about the knife, fork, and spoon). If we are thinking of the knife, fork, and spoon as three separate objects, we would say: "There (or here) are a knife, a fork, and a spoon." Compare this to the other way around: "A knife, a fork, and a spoon ARE here." (In everyday usage we would rarely say: "A knife, a fork, and a spoon is here"!) But, if in our mind we are thinking about the knife, fork, and spoon as a *set* of cutlery or as a *set* of tableware, we can say "There (or here) is a knife, a fork, and a spoon. The basic meaning is "There (or here) is a set of a knife, a fork, and a spoon." Since this is such a common set, we often think of the three objects as a set without saying the word "set." And in English, the order we say these words is almost always: knife, fork, spoon

I say "There is a spoon, a fork, and a knife". If you wanted to say that there are more than one fork, spoon, and knife you say:- "There are spoons,forks,and knives"

The segment "are a" doesn't work for lists of things. So you say, "There is a knife, fork and spoon (on the table)." Note the order of cutlery too. ;)