Introduction

Unlike the لـ that means 'lest', this لـ cannot be replaced with the conjunction لاحسن. It shows that the speaker has good reason to believe that the clause after لـ has happened but is not 100% certain. Depending on the situation, it can be translated as 'what if', 'I bet', 'perhaps', 'might be', 'it seems to me', 'there's a chance'. This conjunction is very similar to ممكن, but seems to require either seeing something or hearing something that leads the speaker to the conclusion that is headed by لـ. Note, the 'what if' used here is not the same 'what if' as in 'what if you had a million dollars, what would you do?' Here it is the 'what if' that is used in English to express the actual possibility of something happening. The clause that لـ precedes must have a plain-form present tense verb (the verb cannot have the prefix بـ which marks habitual action or the prefix هـ/حـ which marks the future). If the clause does not contain a plain-form present tense verb, then the helping verb يكون / تكون is used.