3ilm al7asub
computer scienceThe word, broken down.
عِلْم اَلْحاسوب 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 'm'. A small round head with a tail.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A breathy h from deep in the throat, heavier than an English 'h'.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A plain 's'. Three small teeth in a row.
A 'w', or a long 'u' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.
What does 3ilm al7asub mean in Arabizi?
3ilm al7asub is how you write عِلْم اَلْحاسوب in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “computer science”.
The 3 stands for ع (ayn): a throaty sound. No clean English equivalent. 3 is a mirrored ع.
The 7 stands for ح (ḥa): a breathy h, deeper than English h. 7 bends the way ح bends.
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 — 15 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 jobs & work 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
- 05L→م
- 06Space→
- 07H→ا
- 08Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 09G→ل
- 10Shift+X→ـْ
- 11P→ح
- 12H→ا
- 13S→س
- 14,→و
- 15F→ب