Arabic vocabulary
How to say “you knew” in Arabic, with pronunciation and real example sentences from OpenArabic texts.
فَقَالَ لِي يَا أَبَا سَعِيدٍ أَمَّا عَلِمْتَ أَنِّي لَا أَخَافُ مِنَ الْعَصَا وَلَا مِنَ الأَسْلِحَةِ
So he said to me, "O Abu Sa'id, did you not know that I do not fear the stick or the weapons?"
عَلِمْتَ — you knew. A past-tense verb of knowing carrying a 'you' suffix as its subject, 'you knew'. Paired with the rhetorical opener it builds 'did you not know', a prod rather than a real inquiry. It leads into the 'that...' clause stating what should have been known.
From: Seeking Refuge from the Devil →أَتَراكَ مَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّ الْأَمْرَ بِعَوَاقِبِهِ؟
Do you think you did not know that the matter has its consequences?!
عَلِمْتَ — you knew. A past-tense verb with the suffix '-ta' marking a 'you' (masculine) doer, so 'you knew' is one word. Negated before it, it forms 'you did not know', the thing the rhetorical question challenges.
From: Guarding the Heart from Heedlessness →OpenArabic teaches words like عَلِمْتَ through real bilingual reading with native audio and spaced-repetition practice.
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