Ahla wa sahla! In this video, I want
to talk to you about one little word in
formal Arabic, and that word is قد. This
is one of those words that can drive
learners of Arabic to frustration if
they try to look it up in a
dictionary, or if they encounter it in a
text, and its meaning is unclear, but it
really has a limited number of very
simple meanings, and those are what I want
to try articulate here. قد has two
basic meanings. The first enables us to say
something like 'maybe, might, it is possible
that,' very similar to what we understand
if we read من الممكن أن in a formal
Arabic text, or hear something like يمكن
or ممكن in colloquial speech, right?
It gives that sense of possibility, of
uncertainty. For example if we wanted to
say 'I might study, or I might go to the
movies,' that's a situation where we could
use قد. ِAnd when we use قد to mean that,
to imply that possibility and
uncertainty, we always, always follow it
with a present tense verb. So, 'I might study,
or I might go to the movies,'
we could render that as قد أدرس
أو قد أذهب إلى السينما.
Maybe X, maybe Y, I'm not sure. The other main
function of قد in modern Standard Arabic
is as an intensifier of completed
actions. Think about the difference
between 'I studied' and 'I did study,' or 'I
have studied.'
Maybe if we're having an argument with
someone about studying versus going to
the movies, and they say 'you need to
study!' and you want to say 'no, but I have
studied! I did my studying!' There is a case
where we could use قد to mean 'it
did happen,
we have done it,' something like that, and
in that scenario, قد always needs to be
followed by a past-tense verb. so for 'I
studied,' we could get away with using
just the conjugated verb, دَرَستُ.
But for these, we might say قد دَرَستُ.
It adds that additional flavor of finality
or completion to what we're trying to
say. Another example, if we want to say
'the meeting ended,' we could say انتهى الاجتماع
But if, for whatever reason, we
wanted to say 'the meeting has ended,' we
could just add قد to the beginning and
there it has that more intensive flavor
of completion to it. The difference in
meaning is slim, but sometimes it can be
important, especially if we're having a
back-and-forth about whether we can go
to the movies once we've completed our
studying. Now if we're translating for some
reason from Arabic to English, depending
on the context, we might not even need to
translate that nuance--that noniintensive
version in English might be more
appropriate, depending on what we're
trying to say, since the difference is
very slim. However, sometimes it might add
a certain essential rhythm, right, if we
want to refer that completion. One other
thing I should mention is that sometimes
for this intense completion version, we
will see a version of قد where we have
added a لـ to the beginning of it, so
the whole thing looks like
this, and it's pronounced لَقَد. But the
difference is very, very slim.
It's basically even more intense.
Sometimes if someone's trying really
hard to convey the literal flavor of the
Arabic text they might add that 'indeed,'
or 'verily,' or 'truly, the meeting has ended!'
'verily, I have studied,' something like
that, but it can sound a little bit silly
and archaic in English. Sometimes if
you're translating an old text and you
want to give that archaic flair,
excuse me, flavor, it can give that boost
of meaning. Other times it might be
appropriate to just skip that nuance of
meaning entirely, since we don't have a
really modern equivalent in English.
There are times though when it might be
appropriate: I think of the William
Carlos Williams poem written in English
that reads in the beginning: 'I have eaten
the plums/that were in the icebox.' Now if
we were trying to convey the information,
you could just say, 'I ate the plums in
the icebox,' right? But the author of this
poem made deliberate choices that gave
a certain rhythm to the text, so if we're
trying to say this, 'I have eaten the
plums,' there would be a thoroughly
appropriate point to say لقد أكلت الخوخ
which matches up very
nicely with that sort of extra 'I have
eaten,' I did do it. And if we were
translating this poem into Arabic, could
give a little bit of pleasing rhythm to
what we're trying to say. But the
distinction in meaning between قد
before a present tense verb in the sense
of maybe, possibly and قد before a past
tense verb for this intense flavor is
pretty distinct, and the difference
between قد and لقد as
intensifiers is marginal at best, so if
we encounter قد or لقد in any of these
situations, it should be pretty easy to
figure out which category it falls into,
based on the presence of a present tense
or past tense verb. And one final thing
if you look up لقد
in a dictionary, you probably aren't
going to find it because it is a
combination of the preposition لِـ and
قد so don't worry about that don't
spend your time doing that just
recognize that when we see قد it
pretty much is going to fall into one of
those two categories in a modern text.
Figure out which one it is, and then you
should be
good to go. But since قد and لقد appear
absolutely everywhere in expository
formal tests in Arabic, excuse me,
expository texts in Arabic, it's a really
really good word to have an active
understanding of, not just to allow your
eyes to brush over it, and hope that it's
not important, but to really have a sense
of which function it's fulfilling. And as
learners of Arabic قد and لقد are
great ways to make our writing and
formal discourse seem a little bit less
like they're
translated from our first
languages, and give them a more Arabic
flavor.