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Arabic alphabet
ﺍ    ﺏ    ﺕ    ﺙ    ﺝ    ﺡ
ﺥ    ﺩ    ﺫ    ﺭ    ﺯ     س
ﺵ    ﺹ    ﺽ    ﻁ    ﻅ    ﻉ
ﻍ    ﻑ    ﻕ    ﻙ    ﻝ
ﻡ    ﻥ    ه‍    ﻭ    ﻱ
History · Transliteration Diacritics · Hamza ء Numerals · Numeration v • d • e

The Arabic chat alphabet or Arabesh ("Arabizi" or "عربيزي") is used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons. It is mainly a character encoding of Arabic to the Latin alphabet. Users of this alphabet have developed some special notations to transliterate some of the letters that do not exist in the Latin alphabet.

There are no strict rules for conversion into Arabic chat alphabet; the table below represents how Latin alphabets are primarily used. The way of writing greatly varies by accent and country.

It is an SMS language that allows SMSes (text messages) to be sent in Arabic on a Latin alphabet keypad. Arabic letters are replaced by letters that are phonetically equivalent, or nearly equivalent, in English. Arabic letters that have no phonetic counterpart in English are represented by numbers, or numbers preceded by an accent mark.

Contents 1 History 2 Usage 3 Comparison table 4 Example 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] History

During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become increasingly prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text in to English using the Latin script. To handle those Arabic letters that do not have an approximate phonetic equivalent in the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the Latin numeral "3" is used to represent the Arabic letter "ع" ("ayn").

There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, as it is relatively young and is only used in an informal setting. Some people have christened it Arabic chat alphabet because it was most often used to communicate on online chat services; the main name is "Aralish" or "Arabish" (as "Ara"/"Arab" stands for the first letters of "Arabic" and "Lish"/"ish" stands for the last letters of "English"). The most frequently used term for such transliteration in Modern Standard Arabic is عربية الدردشة , literally "Chat Arabic.". The first place to use it was Egypt ^{[citation needed]}.

Though arabesh was once a necessity for sending SMSes in Arabic, phone service providers now widely offer Arabic alphabet support. Despite this, use of arabesh continues, in part due to its popularity, and in part due to its usefulness in transliterating Arabic to English.
Some traditional Muslims view arabesh as a detrimental form of Westernization. Arabesh emerged amid a growing trend among Arab youth, especially in Lebanon and Jordan, to incorporate English into Arabic as a form of slang. Arabesh is used to replace Arabic script, and this raises concerns regarding the preservation of the quality of the language (see Arabic and Islam).

[edit] Usage

Online communication, such as IRC, bulletin board systems, and blogs, are often run on systems or over protocols which don't support codepages or alternate charactersets. This system has gained common use and can be seen even in domain names such as Qal3ah.

It is most commonly used by youths in the Arab world in very informal settings, for example communicating with friends or other youths. The Arabic Chat Alphabet is never used in formal settings and is rarely, if ever, used for long communications. The length of any single communication in ACA rarely ever exceeds more than a few sentences at a time.

Even though the Arabic language is well integrated with Windows XP and Mac OS X, people still use it in Arabic forums and instant Messaging programs such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger because they don't always have Arabic keyboards. Also, some people are not capable of using an Arabic keyboard as it is much more complicated than the English one.

[edit] Comparison table

Because of the informal nature of this system, there is no single "correct" way, so some character usage overlaps (e.g. 6, which is used sometimes for both ط and ح ). But 7 is mostly used for ح.

Most of the characters in the system make use of the roman character (as used in English) that best approximates phonetically the Arabic letter that one wants to express (for example, ﻙ corresponds to k). This may sometimes vary due to regional variations in the pronunciation of the Arabic letter (e.g. ﺝ might be transliterated as j in the Gulf dialect, or as g in the Egyptian dialect).

Those letters that do not have a close phonetic approximate in the Latin alphabet are often expressed using numerals or other characters. These have been selected so that the numeral graphically approximate the Arabic letter that one wants to express (e.g. "ع" is represented using the numeral 3 because the latter looks like a horizontal reflection of the former). This usage is similar to a subconvention in the l33t form of text communication, wherein Roman letters are replaced with similar-looking numbers or symbols (e.g. $ for "S", 3 for "E", and 4 for "A").

Since many letters are distinguished from others solely by a dot above or below the main character, the conversions frequently used the same letter or number with a comma or apostrophe added before or after (e.g. 3' is used to represent "غ").

Stand-alone	Initial	Medial	Final	Arabic Chat Alphabet	Phonetic Value IPA
ﺀ	أ ؤ إ ئ ٵ ٶ ٸ, etc.			2	[ʔ]
ﺍ	—		ﺎ	a	various, including [aː]
ﺏ	ﺑ	ﺒ	ﺐ	b	[b]
ﺕ	ﺗ	ﺘ	ﺖ	t	[t]
ﺙ	ﺛ	ﺜ	ﺚ	s / th	[θ]
ﺝ	ﺟ	ﺠ	ﺞ	g / j	[ʤ] / [ɡ]
ﺡ	ﺣ	ﺤ	ﺢ	7	[ħ]
ﺥ	ﺧ	ﺨ	ﺦ	5 / 7' / kh	[x]
ﺩ	—		ﺪ	d	[d]
ﺫ	—		ﺬ	z / th	[ð]
ﺭ	—		ﺮ	r	[r]
ﺯ	—		ﺰ	z	[z]
ﺱ	ﺳ	ﺴ	ﺲ	s	[s]
ﺵ	ﺷ	ﺸ	ﺶ	sh	[ʃ]
ﺹ	ﺻ	ﺼ	ﺺ	S / 9	[sˁ]
ﺽ	ﺿ	ﻀ	ﺾ	D / 9'	[dˁ]
ﻁ	ﻃ	ﻄ	ﻂ	TH / T / 6	[tˁ]
ﻅ	ﻇ	ﻈ	ﻆ	Z / TH / 6'	[ðˁ] / [zˁ]
ﻉ	ﻋ	ﻌ	ﻊ	3	[ʕ] / [ʔˁ]
ﻍ	ﻏ	ﻐ	ﻎ	gh / 3'	[ɣ] / [ʁ]
ﻑ	ﻓ	ﻔ	ﻒ	f / ph	[f]
ﻕ	ﻗ	ﻘ	ﻖ	q / 8 / 9 / 2	[q]
ﻙ	ﻛ	ﻜ	ﻚ	k	[k]
ﻝ	ﻟ	ﻠ	ﻞ	l	[l], [lˁ] (in Allah only)
ﻡ	ﻣ	ﻤ	ﻢ	m	[m]
ﻥ	ﻧ	ﻨ	ﻦ	n	[n]
ﻩ	ﻫ	ﻬ	ﻪ	h	[h]
ﻭ	—		ﻮ	w	[w] , [uː]
ﻱ	ﻳ	ﻴ	ﻲ	i / y	[j] , [iː]

[edit] Example

Arabic:

هذه ويكيبيديا القاموس المجاني على الانترنت

English Translation:

This is Wikipedia, the free dictionary on the internet.

Arabesh interpretation:

hayde wikibedia l'amus al-majeni 3ala l-internet.

Thahab ma3a alree7 / Zahab ma3a alree7

Standard Arabic: ذهب مع الريح

English: Gone with the Wind

alsalam 3alikom wa ra7mato Allah wa barakatoh

Standard Arabic: السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

Transliteration: Al-salam 3aleykum wa-ra7matu allah wa-barakatuh

English: "Peace be with you and God's Mercy and Blessings upon you" (a common greeting throughout the Arab world)

ba9al aw 6ama6em / basal aw tamatem

Standard Arabic: بصل أو طماطم

English: Onion or tomato

bri6ania al3o'6ma / britanya el 3ozma

Standard Arabic: بريطانيا العظمى

English: Great Britain

[edit] See also

• Arabic transliteration
• l33t
• Volapuk encoding — the same idea with Cyrillic
• Fingilish the same idea with Persian

[edit] External links

• English-Arabic Transliteration Tool

v • d • e Internet dialects
Internet slang • Leet/1337 • Greeklish • Arabic Chat Alphabet • Denglisch • Volapuk