لدينا موعد في المستشفى بعد ساعة.

after

Breakdown of لدينا موعد في المستشفى بعد ساعة.

• في: at/in
• موعد: appointment
• المستشفى: hospital

Questions & Answers about لدينا موعد في المستشفى بعد ساعة.

What does لدينا mean here, and why isn’t there a normal verb meaning to have?

In this sentence, لدينا means we have.

Arabic usually does not use a separate everyday verb equivalent to English have in sentences like this. Instead, it often uses a preposition-like word plus a pronoun:

• لدى = roughly with / at the possession of
• نا = us / we

So لدينا موعد literally comes out something like At/with us is an appointment, which is the normal Arabic way to say We have an appointment.

This is very common in Arabic:

• لديّ سؤال = I have a question
• لديه سيارة = He has a car
• لدينا موعد = We have an appointment

Why doesn’t the sentence include a separate word for we?

Because the we is already built into لدينا.

The ending -نا means us / our / we in this kind of structure. So Arabic does not need a separate subject pronoun here.

Compare:

• لديّ = I have
• لديك = you have
• لدينا = we have

So the sentence already contains the idea of we inside the word لدينا.