al3a'ila
the familyThe word, broken down.
اَلْعائِلة reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
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 voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A glottal stop carried on a dotless yāʾ.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
The 'tied tāʾ'. It marks a feminine ending, sounded as a soft 'a'.
What does al3a'ila mean in Arabizi?
al3a'ila is how you write اَلْعائِلة in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “the family”.
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 — 10 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 →- 01H→ا
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03G→ل
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05U→ع
- 06H→ا
- 07Z→ئ
- 08Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 09G→ل
- 10M→ة