kam assa3a
what time is itThe word, broken down.
كَم اَلْسّاعة reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A plain 'k'.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
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 plain 's'. Three small teeth in a row.
Doubles the letter it sits on; hold the consonant a beat longer.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
The 'tied tāʾ'. It marks a feminine ending, sounded as a soft 'a'.
What does kam assa3a mean in Arabizi?
kam assa3a is how you write كَم اَلْسّاعة in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “what time is it”.
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 — 13 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 time 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 →- 01;→ك
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03L→م
- 04Space→
- 05H→ا
- 06Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 07G→ل
- 08Shift+X→ـْ
- 09S→س
- 10Shift+`→ـّshadda
- 11H→ا
- 12U→ع
- 13M→ة