7alua
dessertThe word, broken down.
حَلْوى reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A breathy h from deep in the throat, heavier than an English 'h'.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A 'w', or a long 'u' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A dotless yāʾ that sounds like a long 'a'; only ever at a word's end.
What does 7alua mean in Arabizi?
7alua is how you write حَلْوى in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “dessert”.
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 — 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 food & drink 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 →- 01P→ح
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03G→ل
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05,→و
- 06N→ى
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “dessert” is 7alaawe (حَلَاوِة). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear 7alaawe on Tfaddalu →