SabaaH al-kheir! Right now we're going to talk about how to negate verbs with a past
tense meaning in formal Arabic using the particle لم. If you watched our last
video on conjugating verbs in the past and the other video on negating verbs,
you remember that one way we can negate verbs with a past tense meaning is by
using the particle ما plus the conjugated past tense, الماضي as we
say in Arabic. For example, if we wanted to say 'he didn't read the book,' one way
we could say that is ما قرأ الكتاب
And this is an acceptable written form, but there's another way of negating the
past in formal Arabic. nstead of using ما and the conjugated past tense, we use
لم plus المضارع المجزوم
المضارع المجزوم is a variation on the conjugated present tense. Here we
have a chart, using the formal Arabic verb for 'to do,' يفعل, conjugated in
مرفوع and منصوب and مجزوم. And you'll notice that there are minor
differences in the verb endings, and we can use the same template for any verb
that we like. So one other way to express this idea, 'he didn't read the book,'
ما قرأ الكتاب, would be to say instead لم يقرأ الكتاب.
and since لم needs to be followed by المضارع المجزوم, if we were reading this
text fully vocalized, reading it aloud, we would have to include a 'sukuun,' يقرأْ or
we would need to write our 'sukoon' there. لم يقرأْ الكتاب. There is no
final 'Damma' there, is no final 'kasra,' like in these other conjugated مضارع
forms. We can only use مجزوم after لم. It's important to remember that
there is no functional difference in meaning between these two, right? They're
exactly equivalent. Let's take another example: if we wanted to say 'they didn't
live in Cairo,' one way we could say that, again, is to use ما and the conjugated
past tense: ما سكنوا في القاهرة
if we wanted to use لم and المضارع المجزوم, we would render it instead like this:
لم يسكنوا في القاهرة.
Again, exactly equivalent in meaning, and if they're exactly equivalent in meaning,
you might be tempted to simply rely on ما and the conjugated past tense verb to
get your meaning across. However a lot of native speakers of Arabic say that they
feel that لم plus the مجزوم is kind of a more
refined and elegant way to express the same idea, the idea of negating the past.
That ما kind of has an informal flavor, probably because it's closer to the way
we would negate the past tense in dialects like Egyptian or Levantine, so
if you are looking for that refined sensibility to include in your own
formal writing and speech, it's a good idea to use لم and مضارع مجزوم 37 00:04:11,379 --> 00:00:00,000 to express that idea in the appropriate contexts.