tab3an
of courseThe word, broken down.
طَبْعاً reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
An emphatic 't': heavier and deeper than a plain 't'.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
Adds an '-an' ending (two slanted strokes above).
What does tab3an mean in Arabizi?
tab3an is how you write طَبْعاً in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “of course”.
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 — 7 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 clothes 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 →- 01'→ط
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03F→ب
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05U→ع
- 06H→ا
- 07Shift+W→ـًtanwīn fatḥ
This page shows the written standard. In everyday Palestinian speech, “of course” is 'akeed (أَكِيد). Our sister site Tfaddalu teaches the spoken dialect, with audio and example sentences. Hear 'akeed on Tfaddalu →