ahlan
helloThe word, broken down.
أَهْلاً reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A glottal stop carried on an alif.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A soft 'h', as in the English word 'hat'.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
Adds an '-an' ending (two slanted strokes above).
What does ahlan mean in Arabizi?
ahlan is how you write أَهْلاً in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “hello”. No numbers in this one; it spells out in plain Latin letters.
New to the chat alphabet? See how every letter and number maps: 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 — 7 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 greetings & introductions 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 →- 01Shift+H→أ
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03I→ه
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05G→ل
- 06H→ا
- 07Shift+W→ـًtanwīn fatḥ
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “hello” is mar7aba (مَرْحَبا). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear mar7aba on Tfaddalu →