3afu
you're welcome, excuse meThe word, broken down.
عَفْواً reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'f'. One dot above a small loop.
A 'w', or a long 'u' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
Adds an '-an' ending (two slanted strokes above).
What does 3afu mean in Arabizi?
3afu is how you write عَفْواً in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “you're welcome, excuse me”.
The 3 stands for ع (ayn): a throaty sound. No clean English equivalent. 3 is a mirrored ع.
For the rest of the chat alphabet, see the Arabizi → Arabic guide. Got it the other way round, with Arabic script to convert? That is the Arabic to Arabizi converter.
The keystrokes, in order.
On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 7 key presses. Diacritics sit on the Shift keys. The on-screen keyboard on this site highlights each key as you go.
It sits in the greetings & introductions lesson of our Arabic typing practice course, if you would rather drill it next to the words it turns up with.
Practice typing this word →- 01U→ع
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03T→ف
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05,→و
- 06H→ا
- 07Shift+W→ـًtanwīn fatḥ