rabi3
springThe word, broken down.
رَبيع reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.
A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
What does rabi3 mean in Arabizi?
rabi3 is how you write رَبيع in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “spring”.
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 — 5 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 weather 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 →- 01V→ر
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03F→ب
- 04D→ي
- 05U→ع
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “spring” is 3een (عِين). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear 3een on Tfaddalu →