limadha
whyThe word, broken down.
لِماذا 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 short 'i', written as a small stroke below 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.
The 'th' in 'this'. Like dāl, with one dot above.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
What does limadha mean in Arabizi?
limadha is how you write لِماذا in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “why”. 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 — 6 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 food & drink 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
- 02Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 03L→م
- 04H→ا
- 05`→ذ
- 06H→ا
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “why” is leesh (لِيش). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear leesh on Tfaddalu →