7awalay
around, approximatelyThe word, broken down.
حَوالَيْ 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 'w', or a long 'u' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
What does 7awalay mean in Arabizi?
7awalay is how you write حَوالَيْ in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “around, approximately”.
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 — 8 key presses. Diacritics sit on the Shift keys. The on-screen keyboard on this site highlights each key as you go.
Want the keys under your fingers first? The mixed session on our Arabic typing practice page runs through words from every set.
Open the typing practice →- 01P→ح
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03,→و
- 04H→ا
- 05G→ل
- 06Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 07D→ي
- 08Shift+X→ـْ
The definition is adapted from the Wiktionary entry, whose contributors publish it under CC BY-SA 4.0. The frequency rank counts how often the word appears in film and TV subtitles (OpenSubtitles, via Hermit Dave’s FrequencyWords). More on the acknowledgements page.