tastami3u
you listen, you all listenThe word, broken down.
تَسْتَمِعوا 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'.
A 'w', or a long 'u' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
What does tastami3u mean in Arabizi?
tastami3u is how you write تَسْتَمِعوا in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “you listen, you all 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 — 11 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
- 10,→و
- 11H→ا