mar7aban
helloThe word, broken down.
مَرْحَباً 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 rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
A breathy h from deep in the throat, heavier than an English 'h'.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
Adds an '-an' ending (two slanted strokes above).
What does mar7aban mean in Arabizi?
mar7aban is how you write مَرْحَباً in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “hello”.
The 7 stands for ح (ḥa): a breathy h, deeper than English h. 7 bends the way ح bends.
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 — 9 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 greetings & introductions 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
- 03V→ر
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05P→ح
- 06Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 07F→ب
- 08H→ا
- 09Shift+W→ـًtanwīn fatḥ
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “hello” is mar7aba (مَرْحَبا). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear mar7aba on Tfaddalu →