sha3r
hairThe word, broken down.
شَعْر reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
The 'sh' in 'ship'. Three teeth with three dots above.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
What does sha3r mean in Arabizi?
sha3r is how you write شَعْر in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “hair”.
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 family 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 →- 01A→ش
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03U→ع
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05V→ر