Negation¶
- To make a past tense verb be negative, prefix it with مَا
- To make a present/future tense verb be negative, prefix it with لَا
- And if there's both a past & present tense in a sentence, then لا is used for both.
Negation example
- ما ضرب زيد means "he didn't hit Zayd"
- لا يضرب زيد means "he isn't hitting/won't hit Zayd"
Note
The rules for negation have been simplified here, there's more we'll cover later.
TODO-https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/arabic-verb-forms-negation/