mata
whenThe word, broken down.
مَتى 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 't'. The same body as bāʾ, but with two dots above.
A dotless yāʾ that sounds like a long 'a'; only ever at a word's end.
What does mata mean in Arabizi?
mata is how you write مَتى in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “when”. 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 — 4 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 time 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
- 03J→ت
- 04N→ى
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “when” is 'eemta (إِيمْتا). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear 'eemta on Tfaddalu →