My (Italian) students tend to produce sentences like:
When I arrived, there weren't my parents (as opposed to 'my parents were not there')
I cannot think of a grammar rule to provide an explanation. Can anybody help?
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As FumbleFingers notes, the problem is that "there" and "ci" are not interchangeable although they both have a similar double role.
To simplify, you could tell your students that "there are" or "there is" usually means "to exist" like "esserci", while to mean "there" as in a specific place they have to use it like "lì"/"là".
I miei genitori non c'erano → my parents were not there ← i miei genitori non erano là.
Nemo
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