arabictyper
The word
لَعْب

la3b

to play, playing
Arabicلَعْب
Arabizila3b
Translationto play, playing
TypeMasculine
CategoryHobbies
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

لَعْب reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.

01
Letter
ل
lām
l

A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.

Type:G
02
Diacritic
ـَ
fatḥa
a

A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.

Type:Shift+Q
03
Letter
ع
ʿayn
ʿ

A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.

Type:U
04
Letter
ب
bāʾ
b

A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.

Type:F
← First letter shown leftmost; the actual word is read right-to-left in script.
Arabizi

What does la3b mean in Arabizi?

la3b is how you write لَعْب in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “to play, playing”.

The number in la3b
3ع

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.

How to type it

The keystrokes, in order.

On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 5 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 hobbies 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 →
Sequence
  1. 01Gل
  2. 02Shift+Qـَfatḥa
  3. 03Uع
  4. 04Shift+Xـْ
  5. 05Fب
Composedلَعْب
In Palestinian Arabic

This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “play” is li3eb (لِعِب). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear li3eb on Tfaddalu →

لِعِب
لَعْب
Practice

Type لَعْب until your fingers know it.

Or practice it inside the full Hobbies session, one of sixteen sets in our free Arabic typing practice tool.

Practice just la3bStart the Hobbies set