ma3atif
coatsThe word, broken down.
مَعاطِف reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A plain 'm'. A small round head with a tail.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
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.
An emphatic 't': heavier and deeper than a plain 't'.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A plain 'f'. One dot above a small loop.
What does ma3atif mean in Arabizi?
ma3atif is how you write مَعاطِف in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “coats”.
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 — 7 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 clothes 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 →- 01L→م
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03U→ع
- 04H→ا
- 05'→ط
- 06Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 07T→ف