sari3a
fastThe word, broken down.
سَريعة reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A plain 's'. Three small teeth in a row.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
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'.
The 'tied tāʾ'. It marks a feminine ending, sounded as a soft 'a'.
What does sari3a mean in Arabizi?
sari3a is how you write سَريعة in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “fast”.
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 — 6 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 descriptions 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 →- 01S→س
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03V→ر
- 04D→ي
- 05U→ع
- 06M→ة