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Negate Future Tense With “Lan”
By ArabicTree | November 26, 2008
There’s a particle you can use to negate future-tense, called lan: لَن. It’s a little hard to translate, but it’s a strong negation. You can translate it as “never.”
For example, if you said:
It means “I don’t drink alcohol.” If you used lan instead, like so:
It means “I will never drink alcohol!” So much stronger than the original!
And notice that lan makes the mudaari’ verb mansoob–one of a few things that do so (like laam-ut-ta’leel).
Or, if you wanted to say “I will never shave my beard,” you can say:
“Lan ahlaqa lihyatiy,” I will never shave my beard.
Incidentally, if you wanted to add even more emphasis, you can add abadan to the end, like so:
You can translate “abadan” as “ever” or “forever”–so this sentence would be “I will never shave my beard, ever!” Wow! What power!
And that’s lan in a nutshell. Very strong, very useful; used in the Qur’an a fair bit (like abadan).
May Allah, Al-Aleem, increase us in our knowledge of this great language. Ameen!
Topics: Grammar, Intermediate |