نَدْرِكْreach

Example sentences

• أَدْرَكْتُمْهُ وَلَمْ نَدْرِكْهُ وَرَأَيْتُمْهُ وَلَمْ نَرَهُ

  You met him, but we did not; you saw him, but we did not.

  نَدْرِكْهُ — we reach him. A present-form verb with the 'we' subject in its prefix and the object pronoun '-hu' (him) on its end, pushed into its clipped shape by the preceding 'lam'. The clipping plus 'lam' is what makes it past-negative: 'we did not reach him'. Arabic gets a past negation here from a present verb plus the particle, not from a past-tense form.

  From: A Spy in the Enemy Camp →