لو نزلت من المبنى الآن، لوصلت إلى البنك قبل الساعة العاشرة.

If I went down from the building now, I would arrive at the bank before ten o’clock.

Breakdown of لو نزلت من المبنى الآن، لوصلت إلى البنك قبل الساعة العاشرة.

• الآن: now
• الى: to
• من: from
• قبل: before

Questions & Answers about لو نزلت من المبنى الآن، لوصلت إلى البنك قبل الساعة العاشرة.

What does لو mean in this sentence?

لو is a conditional particle meaning if, but not the most neutral kind of if.

In this sentence, it introduces a hypothetical situation:

لو نزلت من المبنى الآن، لوصلت إلى البنك قبل الساعة العاشرة.
= If you left the building now, you would reach the bank before ten o’clock.

So لو often suggests an imagined, unreal, or less direct condition, rather than a simple real future condition.

Why are نزلت and وصلت in the past tense, even though the sentence talks about now and a future result?

This is one of the most important things to notice.

After لو, Arabic often uses past-tense verb forms to express a hypothetical meaning, not actual past time. So the forms look past, but the meaning is more like English would.

Pattern:

لو + past verb ... لَ + past verb

This often corresponds to:

if ... would ...

So here:

• نزلت literally looks like went down / got out
• لوصلت literally looks like arrived

But together they mean:

If you were to leave now, you would arrive...

So the tense form is grammatical; the actual time reference comes from the whole conditional structure and from الآن.

Why is there a attached to in ?