ya3mal
he works, worksThe word, broken down.
يَعْمَل reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A plain 'm'. A small round head with a tail.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
What does ya3mal mean in Arabizi?
ya3mal is how you write يَعْمَل in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “he works, works”.
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 jobs & work 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 →- 01D→ي
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03U→ع
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05L→م
- 06Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 07G→ل