tastami3
you listenThe word, broken down.
تَسْتَمِع reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A plain 't'. The same body as bāʾ, but with two dots above.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 's'. Three small teeth in a row.
A plain 't'. The same body as bāʾ, but with two dots above.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'm'. A small round head with a tail.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
What does tastami3 mean in Arabizi?
tastami3 is how you write تَسْتَمِع in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “you listen”.
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 — 9 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 daily routine 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 →- 01J→ت
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03S→س
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05J→ت
- 06Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 07L→م
- 08Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 09U→ع