لم يزرع صديقي الشتلة.

لم is a negation particle used with the imperfect verb to express a past negative in Modern Standard Arabic.

So:

• لم يزرع = did not plant

It is one of the most common ways to say that something did not happen in the past.

This is a very common question for English speakers.

In Arabic, after لم, you do not use the past-tense verb form. Instead, you use the imperfect form, but the whole expression refers to the past.

So:

• زرع = he planted
• لم يزرع = he did not plant

Even though يزرع by itself can mean he plants / he is planting, after لم it means he did not plant.

Yes. لم makes the imperfect verb jussive.

In this sentence, the verb is يزرع. Because the root form already ends in a consonant, the jussive does not create a very obvious spelling change here. So it still appears as يزرع.

This means:

• the grammar has changed
• but the written form looks the same in this particular verb

With other verbs, the jussive effect can be more visible.

صديق means friend.

The ending -ي means my, so:

• صديقي = my friend

Arabic often shows possession by attaching a pronoun suffix directly to the noun, instead of using a separate word like my.

So rather than saying something like my + friend as two separate words, Arabic combines them into one word:

• صديق + ي = صديقي

Because Arabic usually expresses this kind of possession with a suffix attached to the noun.

Examples:

• كتابي = my book
• بيتي = my house
• صديقي = my friend

So in this sentence, -ي already contains the meaning of my.

Because verb-subject-object word order is very common in Modern Standard Arabic.

So this sentence follows a normal MSA pattern:

• لم يزرع = verb phrase
• صديقي = subject
• الشتلة = object

Arabic can also use subject-verb-object order in some contexts, for example for emphasis or style, but verb first is very standard in MSA.

The subject is صديقي because it is the one doing the action.

The object is الشتلة because it is the thing receiving the action.

So:

• صديقي = subject
• الشتلة = direct object

In other words, my friend is the one who did not plant, and the seedling is the thing not planted.

الـ is the Arabic definite article, equivalent to the in English.

So:

• شتلة = a seedling / a sapling
• الشتلة = the seedling / the sapling

That is why the noun is definite here.

Because ش is a sun letter.

When الـ comes before a sun letter, the ل sound is not pronounced, and the following consonant is doubled in pronunciation.

So:

• written: الشتلة
• pronounced: ash-shatlah

This is a pronunciation rule only; the spelling still keeps الـ.

The final ة is called tāʾ marbūṭa.

It is very common at the end of many feminine nouns. In pause, it is usually pronounced like -a or -ah, so الشتلة is pronounced roughly ash-shatlah.

In connected grammatical reading, the ة can sound like t when case endings are pronounced.

So this ending is a normal noun ending and often signals a feminine noun.

Grammatically:

• صديقي is nominative because it is the subject
• الشتلة is accusative because it is the direct object

In fully vocalized Arabic, the object would show the accusative ending. In normal everyday writing, short case vowels are usually not written, so learners often have to identify the case from the sentence structure.

Also, with صديقي, the case ending is not obvious in writing because of the attached -ي.

In Modern Standard Arabic, لم يزرع is the more standard and expected way to say did not plant.

Using ما to negate a past verb exists in Arabic, but it is more associated with other registers, styles, or varieties of Arabic. For a learner focusing on MSA, لم + imperfect is the safest and most standard pattern to learn first.

So for MSA:

• لم يزرع صديقي الشتلة = the standard choice

A careful pronunciation would be approximately:

lam yazraʿ ṣadīqī ash-shatlah

A few helpful notes:

• لم = lam
• يزرع = yazraʿ
• صديقي = ṣadīqī
• الشتلة = ash-shatlah

The letter ع in يزرع is a consonant that has no exact English equivalent, so it may take practice.