ya3rif
he knows, knowsThe word, broken down.
يَعْرِف 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 rolled 'r', closer to Spanish than English.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A plain 'f'. One dot above a small loop.
What does ya3rif mean in Arabizi?
ya3rif is how you write يَعْرِف in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “he knows, knows”.
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 descriptions 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
- 05V→ر
- 06Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 07T→ف