masa' alkhayr
good eveningThe word, broken down.
مَساء اَلْخَيْر 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 plain 's'. Three small teeth in a row.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A glottal stop, the catch in the middle of 'uh-oh'.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
The throaty 'kh', like the 'ch' in Bach or the Scottish 'loch'.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
What does masa' alkhayr mean in Arabizi?
masa' alkhayr is how you write مَساء اَلْخَيْر in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “good evening”. 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 — 15 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
- 03S→س
- 04H→ا
- 05X→ء
- 06Space→
- 07H→ا
- 08Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 09G→ل
- 10Shift+X→ـْ
- 11O→خ
- 12Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 13D→ي
- 14Shift+X→ـْ
- 15V→ر