Intermediate - The Arabian Dagger

Spectacular! Love this lesson, and all the extras, and especially the new dialogue mp3. Thank you!

Excellent lesson, the subject of daggers brings lots of romantic-heroic stories to mind!

By the way, one question. You had the following construct in one of your sentences of the dialog:
قد تصل قيمته
which you translated as:
"Its value could reach"
My question is, generally how does the word "قد" work in Arabic? I guess I have learned that it can mean "already", but here it seems to be "could". Also, I guess it is related to the word: لقد
as in:
لقد ذهبت إلى البيت
"I have gone home". Or am I wrong to see a connection between "قد" and "لقد"?

BTW. The good long vocabulary list from this lesson, can be learned here:

http://www.byki.com/lists/Arabic/Arabic-pod-371.html

It would be good to get the sounds in these cards, too... but my own pronunciation is not yet good enough.

The distinctive thing about (قد or لقد - synonyms) is the dependence of the meaning on the tense of the verb after. If (قد) is followed by past tense verb, then it confirms the meaning, like saying (قد ذهب الولد) we could translate it as (indeed the boy has gone). If (قد) is followed by a present tense verb, then it would make the action to happen not assured, like in saying (قد يذهب الولد) we mean here (the boy might go).
Hope that helps

It’s very hard to find this kind of information in Arabic grammar books. Even Ryding says nothing about the use of “qad” with present tense verbs.

Several podcasts might be devoted to the grammatical and stylistic problems associated with emphasis in Arabic. Take the word “lam” (ﻠﻡ), for instance. It is a well known fact that “lam” is used as a negative particle (cf. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic, p. 622), but only a few non-native speakers of Arabic seem to be aware of the fact that “lam” can also be used for emphasis (tawqid). A good example of “lam tawqid” can be found in the Surah al-waqi’a (verse 65). It is particularly instructive to compare verse 65 with verse 70. These verses are very similar, but there is no “lam” in verse 70.

I should have written “tawkiid” (ﺘﻮﻜﻴﺪ).