No, not, indeed, except and that

This lesson teaches eight short words that change what a sentence says. Some deny it ("no", "not", "did not"), two give it weight ("indeed", "surely"), one leaves something out ("except"), and some join one sentence to another ("if", "that").

The new words

Saying no

Lā is "no" and "not". Before a noun it can deny that there is any of a thing at all.

In this verse lā stands before a noun with no article, and the noun ends in a: that is how Arabic says that there is none of something.

Mā is more than one word in one spelling. Most often it means "that which" or "what", and often it means "not". The corpus gives them all the same lemma, and marks which it is in each verse.

Did not

Lam stands before a verb in its present form, and the sentence then denies the past: not "does not", but "did not".

This verse has lam twice, the second time joined to wa, "and", from the first lesson.

Indeed

Inna opens a sentence and gives it weight. The noun or pronoun after it takes the ending of the accusative case, and a pronoun is written as one word with it.

Innā is inna and nā, "we", from the second lesson. The corpus writes the pronoun's part as a long ā alone: the word has only the doubled n of inna.

In, with no doubled n, is another word: "if", and in some sentences "not". Illā is "except" or "only", and an is "that", or "to" before a verb. Qad stands before a verb and makes it certain: the corpus calls it a particle of certainty. In the Qur’ān it stands almost always before a verb in its past form, where it says the thing has surely happened: "has surely", "has already".

In a sentence

This sentence was written for practice. Lā stands before a verb in its present form and denies it: "I do not know".

Reading

الكلمات التي تعرفها كاملةً بعد هذا الدرس مُعلَّمة.

Recall

• How does lam change the sense of a present verb?
• What ending does the noun after inna take?
• What are the two senses of mā this lesson names?

Answers: it denies the past, "did not"; the accusative; "what, that which" and "not".

Next

The next lesson teaches the words for "who", "which", "this", "that", "he" and "they", and how a question is asked.