la a3rif
I do not knowThe word, broken down.
لا أَعْرِف reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
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.
A glottal stop carried on an alif.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A plain 'f'. One dot above a small loop.
What does la a3rif mean in Arabizi?
la a3rif is how you write لا أَعْرِف in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “I do not know”.
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 descriptions 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 →- 01G→ل
- 02H→ا
- 03Space→
- 04Shift+H→أ
- 05Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 06U→ع
- 07Shift+X→ـْ
- 08V→ر
- 09Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 10T→ف