3arabi
Arab, ArabicThe word, broken down.
عَرَبِيّة 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 rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
Doubles the letter it sits on; hold the consonant a beat longer.
The 'tied tāʾ'. It marks a feminine ending, sounded as a soft 'a'.
What does 3arabi mean in Arabizi?
3arabi is how you write عَرَبِيّة in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “Arab, Arabic”.
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 — 9 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 descriptions 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
- 03V→ر
- 04Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 05F→ب
- 06Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 07D→ي
- 08Shift+`→ـّshadda
- 09M→ة
Palestinians say this one much like the MSA: 3arabi. Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear 3arabi on Tfaddalu →