ya3rifun
they knowThe word, broken down.
يَعْرِفون 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.
A 'w', or a long 'u' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
A plain 'n'. A deep bowl with one dot above.
What does ya3rifun mean in Arabizi?
ya3rifun is how you write يَعْرِفون in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “they know”.
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 travel & places 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
- 08,→و
- 09K→ن