3ala
on, about, on top ofThe word, broken down.
عَلى 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 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A dotless yāʾ that sounds like a long 'a'; only ever at a word's end.
What does 3ala mean in Arabizi?
3ala is how you write عَلى in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “on, about, on top of”.
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 — 4 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 home 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
- 03G→ل
- 04N→ى
Palestinians say this one much like the MSA: 3ala. Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear 3ala on Tfaddalu →