كلما سمع اللاعبون صافرة الحكم، توقفوا.

Whenever the players hear the referee's whistle, they stop.

Breakdown of كلما سمع اللاعبون صافرة الحكم، توقفوا.

• يسمع: to listen
• يتوقف: to stop
• لاعب: player
• حكم: referee

Questions & Answers about كلما سمع اللاعبون صافرة الحكم، توقفوا.

What does كلما mean in this sentence?

كلما means whenever or every time that.

It introduces a repeated situation:

• كلما سمع اللاعبون صافرة الحكم، توقفوا.
• Whenever the players heard the referee’s whistle, they stopped.

So this is not about one single event only. It describes something that happens repeatedly: each time the whistle is heard, the players stop.

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Why are both verbs in the past tense, even though English often uses the present in sentences like Whenever the players hear... they stop?

This is very normal in Arabic.

After كلما, Arabic often uses the past tense to describe repeated or habitual events, especially in narrative or general statements about what happened whenever something occurred.

Here:

• سمع = heard
• توقفوا = stopped

So the structure is literally past + past, but the overall meaning can still be:

• whenever
• every time
• each time

In other words, Arabic is not matching English tense usage word-for-word here.

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Why is سمع singular, even though اللاعبون means the players?

Because Arabic often uses here: