Arabizi → Arabic.
Arabizi is what people use when they want to write Arabic but only have a Latin keyboard. marhaba for مرحبا, shukran for شكراً, 3arabi for عربي. It started in chatrooms and SMS in the 90s and stuck around. Below: a converter for common words and the full chart of how the system works.
Type Arabizi, get the Arabic word.
What is Arabizi?
Arabizi (also called Arabish, Franco-Arabic, or 3arabi) is Arabic written with Latin letters and numbers. The numbers stand in for Arabic letters that don't have a clean Latin match — mostly the throat sounds and the emphatic letters.
It's not an official writing system. There's no standard spelling. Two people from the same city might write the same word three different ways. But it's everywhere — Instagram captions, WhatsApp messages, TikTok comments — and if you're learning Arabic, you'll run into it.
The numbers look like the letters.
Once you see the shapes side by side it clicks fast. Each digit was chosen to mirror an Arabic letter that English can't quite spell.
The apostrophe means “add the dot.”
Once you know ع → 3 and that غ is ع with a dot, then 3' → غ makes sense without memorizing anything new.
Letter mappings.
Most letters map cleanly. A few have alternatives because real Arabizi is inconsistent — showing both is more honest than picking one.
Phrases you'll see on Instagram, in WhatsApp, on TikTok.
Why Arabizi exists in the first place.
Phones and computers couldn't handle Arabic script well into the 2000s. SMS had no Arabic support on most networks. Early websites garbled the right-to-left layout. So people made do — Latin keys plus numbers to fill in the gaps.
Arabic works fine on every device now, but Arabizi didn't go away. It's faster on Latin keyboards if you haven't learned the Arabic layout. It mixes naturally with English in bilingual chats. And it dodges the script-rendering issues that still show up in usernames, search boxes, and old forums.
Arabic script, if you're serious about the language.
Arabizi has no standard spelling, no diacritics, and won't show up in books, news, or anywhere formal. It's a chat shortcut. But knowing it has real uses while you build the script.
Arabic script
What to learn- ✓Used in books, news, signs, everything formal.
- ✓Has diacritics — the marks that fix pronunciation.
- ✓One spelling per word. Universal.
- ✓Required to read anything real.
Arabizi
A useful bridge- ✓Read what Arabic speakers post online before you can read the script.
- ✓A stepping stone — typing 7abibi a few hundred times burns ح into memory faster than flashcards.
- ✓You'll need it to chat with people who type that way.
- ×No standard spelling. Inconsistent. Won't appear in formal writing.