3ilka
gumThe word, broken down.
عِلْكة 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 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A plain 'k'.
The 'tied tāʾ'. It marks a feminine ending, sounded as a soft 'a'.
What does 3ilka mean in Arabizi?
3ilka is how you write عِلْكة in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “gum”.
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 — 6 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+A→ـِkasra
- 03G→ل
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05;→ك
- 06M→ة