What Arabizi is and where it comes from
Arabizi (from arabi + inglizi, "English") is Arabic written with the Latin alphabet plus a few digits. Egyptians often call it Franco or Franco-Arabic; others say Arabish or chat Arabic. It spread in the late 1990s and 2000s with SMS, MSN Messenger and forums. Many phones and computers had no Arabic keyboard, and an SMS in Arabic script held only 70 characters instead of 160. People wrote their language with the keys they had. The habit stuck, especially for the spoken dialects, which have no official spelling and were rarely written before.
The number chart
Digits fill the gaps where Latin has no letter for an Arabic sound. Most are chosen because they look like the Arabic letter:
- 2 = ء (hamza), similar shape;
- 3 = ع, a mirrored 3;
- 7 = ح, same outline;
- 5 = خ, the first letter of خمسة (five);
- 6 = ط, roughly its shape;
- 9 = ق or ص, depending on the region;
- 8 = ق and 4 = ش, less common.
An apostrophe after a digit adds the dot of the related letter: 3' = غ, 7' = خ, 6' = ظ, 9' = ض. Letter pairs cover the rest: sh or ch = ش, kh = خ, gh = غ, th = ث, dh = ذ, oo or ou = و.
Regional differences
In Egypt, the Levant and the Gulf, spellings follow English: sh (shu, mashi), oo or u, ee. In the Gulf and much of the Levant, 9 usually means ص (9a7, 9aba7), and ق may be written q or 8. Egyptians use 2 a lot, partly because Cairene Arabic pronounces ق as a glottal stop (2alb for قلب). In the Maghreb, spellings follow French: ch (chouf, kifach), ou (bghitou), and 9 means ق (9oul, 9ahwa). The same word can therefore be written several ways, and none of them is wrong.
Using the converter, and its limits
Paste your text and click Convert to Arabic. For each word the tool builds the possible Arabic spellings (s as س or ص, t as ت or ط, a vowel written or not) and keeps the one found among frequent Arabic words. A word that is not found gets a spelling worked out from the rules. Particles written apart are attached to the next word as Arabic does: wa sahlan becomes وسهلا, el bayt becomes البيت. Fixed expressions (inshallah, mashallah, hamdulillah, wallah, bismillah) are recognised whole, and commas and question marks become Arabic punctuation (، ؟).
Every converted word is clickable: a list shows the other spellings found, and you choose the correct one. Then copy the result.
The tool transliterates; it does not translate. Short vowels are guessed, since Arabic usually leaves them out. Dialect words (Egyptian, Levantine, Darija, Gulf) are less likely to be in the reference list than Modern Standard Arabic, so check them. An Egyptian 2 is always read as a hamza, never as ق. Nothing is sent to a server. To write Arabic from Latin letters as you go, the site's Arabic keyboard also offers a phonetic mode that converts while you type.