Lower Intermediate - Holding your breath

is the verb after "ان" in the iussif than ? great lesson again - very much appreciated explanations of the grammar behind it -thanks

Salut, Plop! Nous sommes sur la même longueur d'onde. Je savais que vous alliez poser cette question. Je parie que l'on a affaire ici à une forme du subjonctif.

Hi plop, hi Desmond, According to one of my former Arabic teachers here in Germany, verbs afer "ان" call for the subjunctive (another strike for Desmond :-)). Look it up in "Arabic verbs & essentials of grammar"by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaarfar or countless other works.Or just ask our wonderful AP teachers.

Keep it up! ;-)

Thanks a bunch, Karen! I'm pleased to learn that my intuition was correct.

When I heard that verb form I pricked up my ears and decided to maintain a wary silence until Plop posted his comment.

I've always been quite good at reading other people's thoughts, and I often startle my students by telling them exactly what they are thinking and which questions they want to ask.

yuridu,yuhibbbu, yajibu, yumkinu , yutlubu (WITHOUT an ) call for the conjunctive changes, with a" u" on the third radical, and suffix changes .li. ki and liki can also do the magic.and lan in the future.
the jussive lacks vowells at the end..comes after la to emphasise a negative order,or after li to make an order more emphatic and after "in" in some conditional thingies,,,,hope this adds to the general confusion.

I'm not sure if there's still a lingering question here or if all of you have managed to answer it yourselves ;-) If there's still uncertainty, let me know and I'll do my best to resolve it!

In terms of distinguishing different words, I found it helpful that this lesson (with the word for "I swim") came so soon after 318 (which had the very similar-looking word for "I become").

تعلمت السباحة, ولكن هذه الأيام لا أسبح أبدآ

I learned to swim, but these days I never swim.